Compliance officers might be a bit dispirited by a new study of policy-management efforts in Corporate America, which shows that companies are making some improvements at the task but still struggling to achieve the mythical “effective” compliance program amid increasing regulation and tough budgets.

Jaclyn Jaeger is a freelance contributor to Compliance Week after working for the company for 15 years. She writes on a wide variety of topics, including ethics and compliance, risk management, legal,...