The title says it all. A very insightful article by Jim Noertz who is a compliance director at Bausch and Lomb, and has global responsibility for developing, evaluating and supporting the company’s compliance and ethics programs.
Archive for the ‘Organizational Ethics’ Category
Compassion, Forgiveness, Gratitude Are Keys To Winning Business Race
January 30th, 2012 by admin | 2 Comments | Filed in Ethical Development, Leadership, Organizational EthicsReuters Investigates Ethics in economics? Who cares?
January 25th, 2012 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Business Ethics, Organizational EthicsBack in December, a Reuters investigation examined the ties between economists who testify to Congress on financial regulation and big financial institutions.
A Reuters review of 96 testimonies given by 82 academics to the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee between late 2008 and early 2010 — as lawmakers debated the biggest overhaul of financial regulation since the 1930s — found no clear standard for disclosure.
In fact, roughly a third did not reveal their financial affiliations in their testimonies, based on a comparison of the text of their testimonies available on the Congressional committees’ websites with their resumes available online.
“Stress” Taking a Heavy Toll on Compliance and Ethics Professionals
January 14th, 2012 by admin | 2 Comments | Filed in Business Ethics, Organizational Ethics, Trust“On-the-job stress leading to sleepless nights and thoughts of quitting work
MINNEAPOLIS, Jan. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — At a time when the public’s attention is focused on the need for greater corporate integrity, the majority of compliance and ethics professionals report that they often wake during the middle of the night with job-related worries and they have considered quitting their jobs due to the stress. This disturbing data was revealed in a recent survey conducted in October and November of 2011 by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and the Health Care Compliance Association.
Overall, 58% of survey respondents reported that they often wake up during the middle of the night worrying about job-related stress and 60% report having considered leaving their job in the last 12 months due to job-related stress.
Compliance and ethics professionals also report that keeping up with new and changing laws and regulations, preventing compliance and ethics violations, and remediating compliance and ethics violations are the greatest contributors to on-the-job stress.
“Six out of ten people waking up in the middle of the night from job related stress is unacceptable for any profession. The Compliance profession’s purpose is to prevent and detect the problems that have occurred in organizations such as Enron, Tyco, and Penn State University. There are reasons those who came before the Compliance profession stopped short of fixing these problems. Fixing these problems is very difficult and stressful. SCCE and HCCA will work to help their 10,000 members deal with this stress. We have dedicated a day and a half strategic planning session in January 2011 to this issue and this issue alone. However, we can only do so much. Compliance professionals, who are asked to do this difficult job, need support from leadership, reasonable authority, and independence. If society wants to us deal with these issues—so difficult that others have chosen to look the other way—then society should make an effort to support this profession,” said SCCE and HCCA Chief Executive Officer Roy Snell.
Most compliance and ethics professionals report that adversarial relationships with their colleagues, adds to job-related stress. Fifty-eight percent of respondents felt they are in an adversarial situation or isolated from colleagues in other departments. Compliance and ethics professionals positively rated their relationship with the legal department; 54% gave it a “5″ rating while another 26% gave it a “4″ rating. However, the relationship with the sales, marketing, and manufacturing departments was clearly the poorest with 14% rating it a “5″ and only 24% rating it a “4″.”
Boards of Directors and Compliance: 4 Areas of Inquiry by Thomas Fox
December 27th, 2011 by admin | 2 Comments | Filed in Business Ethics, Leadership, Organizational Ethics“In an article in the December 2011 issue of Compliance Week magazine entitled “Board Checklist: What Every Director Should Know,” author Jaclyn Jaeger reported on a panel discussion at the Association of Corporate Counsel’s 2011 Annual Meeting, held in October. The discussion was centered on four core areas upon which directors should focus their attention: (1) structure, (2) culture, (3) areas of risk and (4) forecasts.”
A Code of Ethics for Mediation – a Brazilian experience
December 25th, 2011 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Business Ethics, Organizational EthicsIn Brazil nowadays there are three Codes of Ethics devoted to Mediation. “The first one, published in 1997, was drawn up by CONIMA – The National Council of Mediation and Arbitration Institutions – an organization that is made up of entities dedicated to the teaching and practice of Mediation. The second one, published in 2010 by the National Council of Justice – CNJ, along with Resolution #125 of November, 2010. This Resolution determined the practice of Mediation as a Public Policy all over the Court Houses in the country, establishing at the same time guidelines for the qualification of mediators. The third one came afterwards, published in August 18th, 2011 by FONAME – The National Forum of Mediation an organization that also encompasses institutions devoted to the teaching and the practice of Mediation in the country.”
Some Ethical Dimensions to Robotics
December 20th, 2011 by admin | 2 Comments | Filed in CSR, Ethical Development, Leadership, Organizational Ethics“Should robots be programmed to follow a code of ethics, if this is even possible? Are there risks in forming emotional bonds with robots? How might society–and ethics–change with robotics? This volume is the first book to bring together prominent scholars and experts from both science and the humanities to explore these and other questions in this emerging field. Starting with an overview of the issues and relevant ethical theories, the topics flow naturally from the possibility of programming robot ethics to the ethical use of military robots in war to legal and policy questions, including liability and privacy concerns. “
The Next Frontier of Museum Ethics
December 7th, 2011 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Organizational Ethics Interesting polling happening on the future of museums. “Here at CFM, we’re wrapping up Round Three of Forecasting the Future of Museum Ethics. The survey closes Dec. 9 (there’s a link below if you still haven’t participated) and I can hardly wait to compile the input from our Oracles and the public.
Most of the issues that have surfaced during the forecasting exercise are echoes of ongoing arguments from a hundred year or more of the museum literature. I’d lay money that John Cotton Dana (d. 1929) was blogging, I mean writing, about the obligation of museums to be economically accessible to the public; the ethics of making collections accessible; and the perils of conflict of interest when it comes to donors, sponsors and members of the governing authority. Maybe these will play out in new ways in coming decades, but we probably know the arguments and the players already.
But the forecast looks at one issue that may actually be new—or at least so different in degree as to be different in kind as well: the challenge of curatorial authority vs. crowdsourced input/community curation/participatory design.”
This paper focuses on how trust—a key cultural factor—affects firms’ decision-making
November 23rd, 2011 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Business Ethics, Decision Making, Organizational Ethics, Trust“Economists have been paying increasing attention to the role that culture plays in a firm’s overall performance. This paper focuses on how trust—a key cultural factor—affects firms’ decision-making process, size, and productivity. Research was conducted by Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University, Rafaella Sadun of the Harvard Business School, and John Van Reenen of the London School of Economics. Key concepts include:
If a firm is headquartered in a country where trust is prevalent (such as Sweden), it is much more likely to decentralize its decision making than if it is headquartered in a country in which trust is rarer (such as India). In short, higher trust leads to more decentralization.
Trust also enables a firm to hire a large number of plant managers, because the CEO will feel comfortable delegating decisions to their direct reports without spending too much time on supervision. Thus, higher trust increases firm size.
Higher trust increases the marginal value of information technology’s effect on productivity.”
The decision to “blow the whistle” involves complex interactions of worker’s ethical obligations to the public, employer and to himself.
November 20th, 2011 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Business Ethics, Case Studies, Corruption, Organizational EthicsAccording to this article from the Jerusalem Post,”Whistle-blowing is one of the most fascinating topics in business ethics. The decision to “blow the whistle” on perceived misconduct involves complex interactions of the worker’s ethical obligations to the public, to the employer and to himself. The potential whistle-blower can be a low-level or high-level employee.”
COMMENTARY: Good Ethics Really is Good Business -Michael Josephson
November 16th, 2011 by admin | 1 Comment | Filed in Business Ethics, Organizational Ethics“Recently, the Wharton School of Business published a book called Firms of Endearment: How World Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose, making the strongest case I’ve seen that good ethics really is good business.”Sample the book here
What Paterno Teaches Us About Ethics
November 11th, 2011 by admin | 1 Comment | Filed in Case Studies, Ethical Development, Organizational Ethics, TrustA Forbes article considers the lessons to be learned from this sad episode
Journalism’s ethical and civic purpose?
November 9th, 2011 by admin | 1 Comment | Filed in Case Studies, Democracy, Organizational EthicsJohn Lloyd, Bruce Page and Matthew Taylor debate the current crisis in UK news media and ask: is it time to re-assert journalism’s ethical and civic purpose?
Ethics and Morality in Public Service
December 22nd, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Organizational EthicsA very good article on a “communal” vs. individual approach to ethics.
Do Competition Authorities Really Want Antitrust Compliance?
December 13th, 2010 by NSteinberg | 1 Comment | Filed in Business Ethics, Organizational EthicsIn this article Donna Boehme, a friend of EthicScan, and her colleague Joe Murphy , two internationally recognised compliance experts, were asked about the approach some competition authorities take to organizational compliance. They note that incentives currently posed by enforcement policy may actually discourage compliance and reflect fundamental misconceptions about the drivers of effective compliance within organizations.
Do you agree?What is your own experience?Can we discern differences depending upon what country we are working in?
Candour and Trust
September 6th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Business Ethics, Decision Making, Organizational Ethics, Public Sector/GovernmentTrust is understood as the sin qua non in the relationship between the political and civil service communities in Canada and according to an article appearing in the the Ottawa Citizen there is much work to be done. The current loss of trust is costing Canada billions.
The Christian Science Monitor also considers the issue of candour and corporate behaviour .
I am beginning to think that we have not made much progress on this issue in spite of all our efforts to consider the values and ethics dimensions of our decisions.
OECD Working Group on Foreign Bribery has issued a Good Practice Guidance relating to anti-bribery.
June 12th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Codes, Corruption, Organizational Ethics, Public Sector/GovernmentMy friend Donna Boehme is looking for feedback. She wrote to me as follows:
“You have probably seen the news that the OECD Working Group on Foreign Bribery has issued a Good Practice Guidance relating to anti-bribery compliance programs. Joe Murphy and I have been participating in this process, and Joe represented SCCE in the Working Group’s programs as a Consultative Partner; we both attended the Dec 9 launch of the GPG by OECD in Paris. We believe this standard actually offers a very useful template for all types of compliance and ethics programs. It has the enormous advantage of being the first truly international standard, since it has been signed off on by the 30 OECD countries plus 8 other signatories to the anti-bribery convention. In a sense it is the “global sentencing guidelines” in terms of its potential impact globally. I have attached our comment draft, which we are circulating broadly for review and comment, including to the OECD and US Sentencing Commission. I’d be interested in any thoughts/input on the draft. Please also feel free to share it with anyone you think might share the interest. We think this OECD Guidance has tremendous potential to expand what was started by the US Sentencing Commission further onto the global stage.
Cheers, Donna
Document is here:
