Ethics

GRC professionals in particular know the importance of tone at the top. When a leader has an ethical lapse, the ramifications can be far-reaching. Michael Volkov discusses the potential fallout of managerial misdeeds. Company managers are the linchpin of a corporate compliance program. Without belaboring the “Tinker to Evers to Chance” baseball analogy, a corporate culture of compliance requires an important...

Meaningful ethical leadership drives cultures of integrity and trust at modern workplaces. Gatekeepers need to forget “tone at the top” and educate, coach and hold CEOs, boards and management to a higher standard than a checklist and catchy phrase. In 2014, I decided to put the greatly overused phrase “tone at the top” on my banned list. I did that...

First published by CCI in 2014, Jeff Kaplan's Compliance & Ethics Risk Assessment: Concepts, Methods and New Directions covers an array of risk assessment ideas, methods, practices, tools and noteworthy items of C&E-related history. It's more than a compilation of Kaplan’s popular columns for Corporate Compliance Insights -- the timeless book supplements and informs C&E risk assessments of all kinds,...

News broke last week of a scandal in which high-profile executives and celebrities allegedly used bribery to secure their children’s admission to colleges across the U.S. Michael Volkov gives background on the story and its principal players. In a shocking announcement, federal prosecutors announced the arrest and charges against numerous individuals in connection with a nationwide criminal investigation focusing on...

The Ethics & Compliance Initiative (ECI) produced four Global Business Ethics Survey (GBES) reports in 2018. In this whitepaper, leading FCPA expert Tom Fox interviews ECI's CEO, Patricia Harned, discussing the findings of the reports, along with key issues raised in each. Instant Download: Read it Now Can’t see the download form? Disable your ad blocker.

To Prevent and Detect Compliance programs exist for the purpose of protecting against misdeeds, and the most effective programs are those that exist within a culture of ethics. Michael Volkov discusses the truism that a company’s culture and its compliance controls are mutually reinforcing. I do not think there is much disagreement on the basic purpose of an ethics and...

Pharma Giant Graduates to Compliance 2.0 In this post from 2018, Donna Boehme dubbed Novartis a new "rock star" on the corporate compliance landscape, claiming the company had elevated its approach to compliance, culture and trust to best practice “Compliance 2.0” status. My readers are familiar with my analysis of the many Compliance 1.0 train wrecks over the past decade,...

No matter your industry, your long-term success as a company strongly correlates to how well you’ve managed to define your ethics and compliance, both inside and outside the organizational structure. A mistake made by many businesses – small or large – is to leave this in the realm of the abstract. Conflicts and confrontations seem to be part of almost...

The Business Case for a Strong Culture of Ethics Culture and ethics are all the rage in management theory and compliance discussions, but we never see them discussed as absolutely dependent on one another. If the ethics of the organization aren’t right, the culture will never be right. We explore this new way of thinking about this critical component of business...

Ethics and compliance are far too often neglected by boards at big firms, even though it's settled law and policy that boards are required to oversee company compliance. In fact, a survey of 26 past and present Chief Ethics and Compliance Officers reveals that most feel their boards don't fully understand the ethics and compliance programs they should be overseeing...

Vienna, VA (June 28, 2018) – The Ethics & Compliance Initiative (ECI), the oldest ethics research and best practice community in the U.S., today released the second installment of the 2018 Global Business Ethics Survey (GBES).  The report's findings focus on the impact that an ethics and compliance (E&C) program has in the workplace, and the return on investment (ROI) for...

Morrison & Foerster's Stephanie Sharron and Andy Serwin discuss the legal and ethical concerns of using AI. The impacts could be far-reaching and potentially include issues such as unlawful bias and discrimination, violations of privacy laws and uncertainty about legal liability and accountability for harms caused. with co-author Andrew Serwin Artificial Intelligence has the potential to reshape our world as...