Ethics & Culture

If you feel like you’ve been busier than usual lately fielding complaints on the company hotline and investigating reports of employee wrongdoing, you’re not alone. Hotline complaints rose last year to 9.4 incidents per 1,000 employees, up from only 9 in 2007 and 8.3 in 2006, according to the latest benchmarking data released by The […]

As the debate over executive compensation reform rages on, a recent survey shows most organizations aren’t linking pay to ethical behavior. Companies aren’t doing much to give incentives for ethical behavior through compensation, according to the findings of a survey of 358 compliance and ethics professionals by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and […]

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about a conversation I had with a manager from a community credit union. His staff included many enthusiastic and energetic young employees. They enjoyed each other’s company at the office and often socialized outside of work. And sometimes their socializing got a little out of hand. The partying was […]

Every once in awhile I see something happening at a company that surprises me—in a good way—about its corporate approach to compliance and culture. Most recently it was a comment from the audit committee chairman for a global foods company, describing the company’s practice of planting “false tips” within its organization to see whether those […]

As everyone reading these words knows, Congress enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 to improve transparency and accountability in business processes and financial reporting. The intent was to increase confidence in public markets. Section 404 of SOX outlined the requirements for senior management at publicly traded companies to assess the effectiveness of internal controls, and […]

At the request of subscribers, Compliance Week offers a Remediation Center, in which readers can submit questions—anonymously—to securities and accounting experts. Compliance Week’s editors will review all questions and then submit them—confidentially, of course—to specialists who can address the issues. The questions and responses will then be reprinted in a future edition of Compliance Week. […]

It’s 2009. Do you know where your gift and entertainment policies are? Amid the economic downturn, heightened anti-bribery enforcement, and glaring headlines of lavish corporate spending, observers say compliance departments would be wise to review their policies on gifts and entertainment. In a recent survey of more than 500 compliance and ethics professionals, 46 percent […]

$246 billion ConocoPhillips today announced the appointment of Gary Russell as general auditor and chief ethics officer of finance. Russell, previously general manager of investor relations, finance, replaces Glenda Schwarz, who will become vice president and controller of finance. The company also appointed E.L. Batchelder as senior vice president and chief administrative officer. Batchelder, previously […]

CA has announced five senior appointments in its law department, including the appointment of Gary Brown as chief compliance officer, and Joel Katz as chief ethics officer. In his new role, Brown has responsibility for the handling of compliance issues and management of compliance improvement programs. Brown, who joined CA in 2005 after serving for […]