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This thesis aims to investigate the causes behind corporate crises. Even though the field of crisis management is growing, it lacks rigorous analysis of management failures in response to corporate crises. Insight into any shared patterns within these failures will improve crisis prevention techniques and aid management processes. By employing a single case study of the JP Morgan Whale trade crisis its causes and the underlying causal mechanisms are researched in depth with the help of process tracing. Four broad theories of causes of corporate crises are used in the analysis of the JP Morgan case: excessive growth, autocratic leadership, uncontrolled change and excessive success culture. The case study shows that all of the factors played a role, but the main factor was unmentioned by the literature. They key development precipitating the Whale crisis was the belief, prevalent within the office that was responsible for the Whale trades, that they were fully aware of market developments and the risks involved. This turned out to be very much mistaken when trading bets made within the office went wrong and big losses had to be incurred. A similar belief was held in the higher management echelons, which assumed that the bank’s overall risk management system was state of the art and did not question the lower level practices that ultimately caused the JP Morgan Whale crisis. The overall conclusion is then that within companies a culture can arise and spread through the firm that causes employees as well as managers to neglect certain risks up until the moment negative effects are already occurring.