Search results for: corporate culture
Suicide Prevention & Speak-Up Culture
Today we have a reminder about the importance and value of a speak-up culture from a rather unlikely source: the new U.S. suicide prevention hotline, which is already receiving more calls than anyone expected. The 988 hotline went live on July 16, replacing the longer, toll-free hotline number that people had used for decades prior.…
Read MoreMicrosoft & Activision, Part II: Repairing Culture
In a post earlier this week we explored the numerous antitrust and privacy concerns that arise from Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Today let’s assume that Microsoft somehow does close this deal. How would Microsoft then address the deeply troubled corporate culture at Activision? That’s a challenge ethics and compliance officers encounter all the…
Read MoreMore on the Challenges of Listen-Up Culture
Today we have a disturbing lesson on ethics and compliance from New Hampshire, where police are frantically searching for a seven-year-old girl who apparently has been missing since 2019 — because nobody took the girl’s drug-addled mother seriously while she tried to raise alarms about her daughter for months. The girl is Harmony Montgomery. She…
Read MoreMapping the Pressures on Corporate Values, Priorities
Sometimes big lessons about corporate culture can come from very small businesses. We have such a lesson today from a butcher shop in New York and its attempt to deal with the Black Lives Matter and gay rights movements — an attempt that failed, miserably, and says much about who determines corporate ethical priorities these…
Read MoreCulture and the Cuban Missile Crisis
I am a bit of a history buff, so lately I’ve been reading Nuclear Folly, a new chronicle of the Cuban Missile Crisis written by Ukrainian history professor Serhii Plokhy. Little did I know when I began reading it, that a central lesson of good corporate governance would be a major theme of this book. …
Read MoreSurvey: Corporate Values Did OK During Pandemic
We have another report this week studying how corporate ethics and compliance functions weathered the pandemic-induced challenges of 2020 — and overall, compliance officers were pretty chuffed about how their organizations held firm to ethical values despite difficult circumstances. The study comes from LRN, which surveyed 650 ethics, compliance, and legal officers at organizations around…
Read MoreCorporate Ethics and Voter Suppression Laws
I’ve long said that the standard corporate response to looming new legislation or regulatory moves is first to do nothing; then scramble and panic once the legislation or regulation comes to pass. Now we see Corporate America has held true to that strategy yet again, in response to Georgia’s voter suppression law. By now you…
Read MoreTrump, the Coup, and Corporate Ethics
Corporate America might be hoping that the difficult issues raised by President Trump’s attempted coup this week and the remaining days of his term will somehow pass them by. Too bad. What Trump has unleashed isn’t something businesses will be able to avoid. In several practical ways, dealing with Trump and his minions — both…
Read MoreCCOs Serving on Corporate Boards
This week I had the privilege of moderating a forum in New York for ethics and compliance officers who wanted to talk about an idea that makes tremendous sense: CCOs serving on corporate boards. After all, regulators increasingly want companies to embrace a culture of compliance that avoids corporate misconduct in the first place, or…
Read MoreCompliance and Careers Amid Corporate Upheaval
This week I was in Denver attending the Converge 2019 conference hosted by Convercent, and as one might expect, lots of the sessions there focused on how to apply technology to compliance programs. For my money, however, the most interesting session explored something quite different: how compliance officers can navigate their careers amid upheaval at…
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