An organization’s Code of Conduct, alternatively referred to as Code of Ethics or Code of Business Standards, is the stated commitment of the behavioral expectations that an organization holds for its employees and agents. Such Codes are now commonplace for most corporations, increasingly shared not only with employees, but with customers and the public at [...]

Pension funds are top news: fraud, white collar crime, indictments, and staggering financial losses. Bernie Madoff, and his skillful manipulation of investors in history’s largest Ponzi scheme, has been a wake-up call for pension fund trustees and fund executives. These are the people who have a fiduciary responsibility and are personally liable for the ups [...]

Public trust in both business and in government has been low for decades. Since Gallup began measuring public trust in the professions in 1976, 19 percent of people on average have had a “very high” or “high” opinion of the honesty and ethics of business executives. Public trust in Congressmen has been even lower at [...]

Accountability is Here to Stay The lack of effective government oversight over the years has been a boon to contractors and corporations, and a bane to taxpayers. Waste, fraud, and abuse in the War on Terror, Hurricane Katrina recovery, and the Wall Street meltdown have finally become so burdensome that the taxpayers—who have watched their [...]

If cow emissions are a leading cause of global warming, does that mean Americans must all become vegan? Cow Burps and Energy Policy By now, the majority of people know that cow burps are a leading emitter of methane into our atmosphere. The absurd information has come out, the jokes have been made and now [...]

Buried amidst news of the disarmament talks between Presidents Obama and Medvedev in Moscow in July was a second, less glamorous story. Six weeks before the presidential summit, a small working group of six Americans and six Russians was gathered to explore the problem of corruption in Russia, its corrosive impact on business relations between [...]

By Gregory Unruh and Fernanda Arreola, Thunderbird School of Global Management Since its reunification in 1975, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has emerged as one of South Asia’s dynamic economies. The success is impressive given the country’s recent history of war, invasion and massive migration as well as the loss of support from the old [...]

Thomas Werlen – General Counsel, Novartis Thoughts And Ideas From The Front Lines CEOs may set the tone from the top, but they need a capable supporting cast to tend to the day-to-day implementation of the company’s compliance and ethics programs. What are these leaders on the front lines talking about and doing these days? [...]

It’s dreadful enough to corrupt others, but even worse to use your official position to steal. Across the globe, we see government officials on the take with staggering reliability. In rapid succession earlier this year, we saw the British scandal unfold as Members of Parliament admitted to cleaning their moats and sheltering their ducks at [...]

In March of this year, the Board of Directors of the Global Reporting Initiative felt that enough was enough. The time had now come for governments to require companies to either provide environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance data or to give reasons for not doing so. The new position was summed up in The [...]

In 2005, the U.S. Army debarred a German company called Optronic GmbH after its president was accused of selling “potential nuclear bomb making materials to a well-known enemy of the United States,”—more specifically, to North Korea. Because of this incident, the Army had a “compelling interest to discontinue any business with this morally bankrupt individual.” [...]

The 2009 Attorneys Who Matter represent the best and brightest in the legal field. The list consists of attorneys in all areas of practice, from federal agencies to leading in-house counsel to the top ethics and compliance officers of major companies. The attorneys have all risen to the top from a combination of their expertise, [...]

Earl Devaney, who was appointed Chairman of the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board by President Obama, speaks on transparency, accountability, Recovery.gov 2.0 and the future of Citizen Inspectors General E: How did you become involved in the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board? ED: I’ve written a lot of scathing reports, and each of [...]