Agreed. When the Volskswagen story broke that was my first repsonse: Management Failure. No matter how you slice it in a company that is run in a hierarchical fashion there is no way that an employee at some level decides to break the law in such a blatant manner without being pressured to do so in some way.
Which in the longer term turned out to be right. I'd love to see Winterkorn behind bars for that one.