Francesco Schettino, captain of Costa Concordia, the Carnival Corporation (NYSE:CCL) ship that ran aground last week, is the latest rogue to abuse his station of authority and damage the reputation of his parent firm by triggering a business process control failure. Micky Arison, chief executive of Carnival Corporation, admitted that the Costa Concordia’s grounding and capsizing had “called into question” the company’s safety and emergency response procedures and practices.

The Steel City Re Corporate Reputation Index metrics for Carnival Corp dropped from the 81st percentile among nearly 7000 firms measured, to the 43rd, and from the 39th percentile among the S&P500 constituent members to the 8th. It also lost nearly $3B in enterprise value, or about 10% of its market capitalization. This is more than the median cost of a major reputational event which is 7% of market cap according to Steel City Re's research.

As the post mortem examination is already disclosing, Captain Schettino’s deviation from the approved navigational plan was not the first. Deviations in processes that result in operational disasters and reputational losses are rarely one-offs. Rather, as investigators are now finding, prior deviations were not observed, or if observed, did not trigger processes to mitigate future deviations. And that is but one of many lessons for operational executives who may have been lulled into thinking that rogues only reside on Wall Street.