Becoming a valuable resource to your board
Given the heightened attention placed on the control environment in corporate governance, the time is right to strengthen the relationship between ethics and compliance officers and their boards of directors. Today's boards require new perspectives on the importance of culture, new ways to assess effectiveness and new approaches to engage the organization in corporate values. This paper reviews a wide range of strategies and tactics to help ethics and compliance officers step up to this potential new role available to them. Effective board governance
Corporate compliance requirements, mandates and guidelines have become the panacea for regulators and rule makers seeking to reform corporate America - adding compliance oversight responsibility to the board's heavy job description. How can a working board hope to do all the jobs now demanded of it? By focusing on the tasks that really matter, setting the right tone and focusing on assessing and improving their organization's ethical health. Enlisting resources to accelerate corporate culture change
One of the most challenging aspects of managing ethics and compliance is gaining the necessary support throughout the organization to adopt the values and model the business conduct the company seeks to ingrain in its culture. This paper reviews several strategies that ethics and compliance professionals can employ to enlist resources and form coalitions to reinforce their efforts. In the Ethical Ecosystem paper, Dov Seidman, LRN CEO and chairman, discusses that even a company that’s punctilious about meeting high standards has to deal with outside influences that may run counter to those standards. As supply chains expand, and as outsourcing and offshoring increase, it’s harder to know where the risks and vulnerabilities are. Today, companies must be aware of, and care for, the entire ethical "ecosystem."Global companies, global integrity
Companies operating in foreign countries find that understanding and complying with variant laws, managing employees far from headquarters, serving customers and relating to suppliers and partners in multiple jurisdictions can introduce significant challenges to developing shared corporate values and realizing a truly global culture. This paper reviews three key issues for multinationals: how to foster a culture of ethical conduct in all countries of operation; how to engage a global workforce in understanding and adopting its corporate values; and how to meet the web of complex legal and compliance obligations that may exist in all its locations. Governance, ethics, and the Sentencing Guidelines: a call for self-governing cultures
The Amended Organizational Sentencing Guidelines for Boards of Directors outlines the Board's role in assessing the effectiveness of a company’s ethics and compliance program, corporate culture and business practices. How to bring your code of conduct to life
Simply having a code of conduct doesn’t guarantee that employees will comply with it, or even that they will understand the issues driving it. So how can an organization turn its code of conduct into a relevant, engaging guide that inspires a workforce toward principled behavior? What type of content and language can win over pessimistic or cynical workers who view such a code as unnecessary, restrictive or even irrelevant? How to engage your workforce to foster a self-governing corporate culture
Individual ethics and compliance initiatives are not enough to create the degree of change in a workforce that cultivates a self-governing corporate culture. Change requires a systemic approach that powerfully engages employees in ethical principles and permeates shared values throughout the entire organizational culture. The impact of codes on conduct on corporate culture
Companies have been writing codes of business conduct for decades, but the role they play in shaping corporate culture is changing dramatically. This paper assesses the impact of codes of conduct and code education on corporate cultures. It suggests ways that organizations can improve the effectiveness of their code programs, with specific examples drawn from successful codes implemented in a variety of companies. |
