Another dispatch from academia, supporting what most compliance officers already suspect: ethics & compliance programs still aren’t working that well.
This time the research comes from Max Bazerman, Ting Zhang, and Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School. Their paper “Morality Rebooted: Simple Fixes to Our Moral Bugs,” published April 24, takes a wide-ranging look at “values-oriented” programs versus “structure-oriented” programs to deliver ethical messages and improve behavior. The conclusions are very much in step with what others have said, and confirm that sinking feeling so many CCOs have. Our obsession with policies, procedures, and programs to drive employee conduct (thank you, U.S. Sentencing Guidelines) isn’t very effective.
