Posts Tagged ‘corporate culture’
Corporate Culture: Speak Up vs. Listen Up
The other week I had the privilege of hosting a webinar on cultivating a speakup corporate culture. Given how important that is for corporate success — and how many organizations either mishandle their speakup culture, or reject the premise that a speakup culture matters entirely — today let’s consider some of the points raised in…
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 MoreMore Activision CCO Drama
We return today to the saga surrounding Activision Blizzard and its chief compliance officer Frances Townsend — because, much to my astonishment, this story is getting even stranger. Townsend is doubling down on her statements about whistleblowers and, apparently, blocking employees on Twitter who disagree with her. Townsend made headlines last week for an ill-phrased…
Read MoreActivision CCO Steps Into a Mess
Looks like Frances Townsend, the chief compliance officer for Activision Blizzard, is going through some things this week. The state of California just sued the video game giant for allowing a sexually harassing culture, Townsend then circulated an email to employees calling the allegations false, and now employees are furious at her statement. This is…
Read MoreDigging Into the State Street Settlement
I haven’t had time to write about this until now, but last week State Street Corp. agreed to pay a $115 million criminal penalty and accept a compliance monitor for two years, to settle charges that the bank deliberately overcharged its clients for years. If you want an example of how invasive compliance monitorships can…
Read MoreEthics Survey, Part II: Management Problems
Today I want to return to the 2021 Global Business Ethics Survey, released last week by the Ethics & Compliance Initiative. There’s another theme in the data that we should explore, since it has significant implications for your compliance program’s risk assessment, training, and policies. That theme: managers are more pessimistic about compliance and ethics…
Read MoreMore Misadventures in Leadership
Who knew, compliance officers, that we could spend Thanksgiving weekend musing over yet another example of tone-deaf leadership and the damage it can do to corporate culture? Yet we can do precisely that thanks to Michael Hancock, mayor of Denver. Those of you in Colorado may already know the story. Hancock, like every other sensible…
Read MoreLeadership Disaster at Holyoke Home
Last week Massachusetts officials published a report about one of the worst failures of our state’s Covid-19 response so far: the deaths of dozens of elderly veterans at the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke, Mass. in late March and early April, at the height of our coronavirus outbreak here. The report is worth compliance and audit…
Read MoreWynn Resorts Monitor Releases Report
Compliance officers looking for something good to read, look no further! Massachusetts regulators have released a preliminary report from the compliance monitor overseeing troubled casino business Wynn Resorts, with glimpses into everything from tone at the top, to policies and procedures, third-party oversight, internal controls, and more. The 118-page report became public as part of…
Read MoreWells Fargo, Part I: How This Happened
Wells Fargo reached a $3 billion settlement with the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission last week, to resolve civil and criminal charges into its unauthorized account scandal from the 2010s. Let’s take a look, since the facts here are a powerful example of how a company can engineer its culture and operations…
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