Keeping the fish fresh: corporate compliance and ethical values

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to focus attention on the increasing interest of regulators in ensuring ethical behavior in public companies. It suggests a variety of ways in which corporations can monitor and assess their own compliance with ethical standards.

Design/methodology/approach

This viewpoint assesses past efforts to create measurement frameworks for ethical standards for corporate integrity and reviews recent business literature on this topic to suggest ways that companies can improve their monitoring and reporting on corporate integrity.

Findings

The study suggests that standards for monitoring corporate culture for ethical compliance are still relatively under-developed. It proposes that, while the exploration of better models continues, it is still critical for companies to “use old-fashioned tools” to monitor for danger signals.

Research limitations/implications

The paper is not a comprehensive review of all the available literature on the topic of corporate culture and ethical compliance, so there may be critical contributions that have been overlooked.

Practical implications

The paper provides pragmatic insights to help companies assess how their culture is or is not contributing to high levels of corporate integrity and tools to continuously asses this aspect of corporate governance.

Social implications

To the extent that companies more fully understand how their culture influences corporate integrity, they will be better able to prevent scandals that impact their reputation and erode stakeholder trust.

Originality/value

The literature on how to monitor and measure the impact of culture on corporate integrity is still relatively sparse. The paper focuses new attention on the emerging regulatory standards that will influence this space.

Citation

Hirsch, P.B. (2019), "Keeping the fish fresh: corporate compliance and ethical values", Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 40 No. 2, pp. 68-72. https://doi.org/10.1108/JBS-01-2019-0003