With corporate scandals continuing unabated and hitting the headlines daily (the U.S. sub-prime mortgage crisis, Siemens’ bribery probe, Societe Generale’s rogue trader, to name a few), more and more organizations—whether corporate, non-profit, academic, or governmental—are adopting global codes of conduct for their employees, executives, agents, partners, and vendors. And these global codes are not necessarily being used as organizational wallpaper like they might have in the past.
Increasingly, organizations are looking to adopt practical, useful, and relevant global codes that will help their people and their business solve problems, mitigate dangers, and even gain competitive advantage. This article focuses not on what should be in a global code per se, but on how an organization can create a living, breathing, customized, and relevant document that goes beyond being decorative to becoming useful. The focus then is to provide a practical blueprint of the ingredients that go into the creation of a global code that is useful and powerful—that is, a representative, respected, and evolving part of the organization’s DNA.
