THE ETHICS BASED COMPANY
Right Action and Right Behavior
When does football become foot-brawl? The answer is when organizers, players or spectators (consumers) don’t play by the rules. The sport with the greatest following in the world is now in full swing in Germany 2006. This is a multi-billion dollar industry that entertains and promotes an ethical lifestyle!
It works because the whole world guided by the top leadership of an international federation working through national organizations has succeeded in standardizing universal rules of behavior.
This industry illustrates to us the fact that the more ethical the organization the more healthy and profitable it becomes. Fair play is definitely the way forward.
Applying these universal principles to Companies can be achieved in the following manner:
1. Top Leadership – The Chairman and Board of Directors together with the Chief Executive Officer and the Senior Management Team should set out the Values and Ethical Standards of conduct for the Company – Provide standardized universal values content
2. Chief Compliance and Ethics Officer – The CCEO should then transmit these values down the line by providing training and support for middle managers who can utilize – “Situational Role-play Workshops” software provided to transmit and internalize these universal values amongst employees.
3. The CCEO should then electronically send out evaluation questionnaires to employees who can then provide feed-back answers electronically along with suggestions and difficulties faced in daily work situations.
4. The CCEO should then discuss with respective Middle Managers and provide an Ethics Report feed-back to the Chairman, Board of Directors and C.E.O.
5. Top Leadership should then act on this feed-back and recommendations in the Ethics Report incorporating action taken in the Company’s Annual Report so that the market can understand and voice its’ approval through increased share value.
Compliance and Ethics practice and monitoring combines human resource management with legal professional skills in shaping organizational behavior.
The In-house lawyer’s privilege – may help Companies create “space for privileged, private and confidential advice” for internal self-regulation and solution by the Board of Directors hence fulfilling the essence of Corporate Governance.
The US Supreme Court explained the rationale for the attorney-client privilege in HUNT V BLACKBURN (1888), observing that the privilege is ‘founded upon the necessity, in the interest and administration of justice, of the aid of persons having knowledge of the law and skilled in its practice, which assistance can only be safely and readily available of when free from the consequences or the apprehension of disclosure.”
Another relent decision of the US Supreme Court is the case of ARTHUR ANDERSEN LLP v. UNITED STATES which stated, “The jury instructions failed to convey the requisite consciousness of wrongdoing. …. A “knowingly . . . corrupt persuader” cannot be someone who persuades others to shred documents under a document retention policy when he does not have in contemplation any particular official proceeding in which those documents might be material. 374 F. 3d 281, reversed and remanded.” By REHNQUIST, C. J., who delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
This stresses the importance for Companies to have clearly written policies, guidelines and codes that instruct employees on what constitutes right action and behavior.
Siddha Param
LL.B. (Hons.)(London), CLP (M)
Corporate Consultant
Mobile: 017 884 6216
E-mail: siddhanet@yahoo.co.uk
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