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RAND and LRN establish alliance to create center for corporate ethics, law and governanceLOS ANGELES, September 7, 2004—The RAND Corporation and LRN announced today that they have established a strategic alliance to create the LRN-RAND Center for Corporate Ethics, Law, and Governance to study ways businesses can best conduct operations ethically, legally, and profitably at the same time. The plans for the new center are in large part a response to ethics scandals that have rocked corporate America in recent years. The center will be part of the RAND Institute for Civil Justice (ICJ) and will build on ICJ work addressing challenges in the civil justice system. Los Angeles-based LRN is the nation's leading provider of legal, ethics, and compliance management and corporate governance services. "It makes sense to determine what led to corporate ethics scandals in the past to know what is needed to avoid more scandals in the future," said ICJ Director Robert T. Reville. "And research on solutions to ethics problems can help us determine if the solutions will work, or if they will simply open the door to new types of scandals in the future. We don't want inadequately researched solutions today to lead to new problems years from now." RAND and LRN were inspired to launch the initiative by the crisis in trust of corporate America and the subsequent regulatory response. These events have created the need for new research into how businesses should conduct themselves in a new environment, according to Reville. "I believe that virtue has been and always will be its own reward," said Dov Seidman, chairman and CEO of LRN. "I also believe that there is growing evidence that now more than ever companies committed to the highest standards of conduct and ethics produce superior results and investment performance over the long term. RAND's systematic, disciplined and empirical approach to these issues will uncover valuable data and insights to inform business leaders and policy makers alike. One key question to answer is whether ethics and compliance can be used by corporations not simply as an instrument to reduce risk, but as a foundational business process to drive productivity and profitability." Seidman and Reville believe the Center will become the central national repository for objective, data-driven analysis of the interaction between organizational behavior, corporate culture, ethics, and law. Research efforts will include topics such as corporate governance; ethics and legal compliance; legislative business reforms, including Sarbanes-Oxley; and government regulation, including actions by the Securities and Exchange Commission. People from the business, legal and research communities are being recruited to serve on a Board of Advisors to provide guidance to the new research center. About The RAND Institute for Civil Justice |
