This is the fourth and final in a series of four posts on insights for compliance officers from different fields of study.  The first post in this series covered lessons from psychology regarding, for example, self-interest and decision-making, from prominent figures such as Sheena Iyengar and Malcolm Gladwell.  The second post was about insights for compliance officers from self-development and coaching, including from people such as Wayne Dyer and Eckhart Tolle.  Last week’s post discussed behavioral economics, focusing on the work of people such as Dan Ariely and Richard Thaler.  Today’s post will suggest ways in which management theory can be applied to corporate compliance programs.

As a practice, compliance is greatly concerned with topics such as governance, controls, leadership, sustainability, business values, organizational integrity, risk controls, institutional decision-making, tone and conduct at the top, and corporate culture.  It shares these general disciplinary themes with management theory, which takes on the broad task of determining and guiding the strategic direction of an organization and steering its employees and resources in furtherance of these goals.  Given that the contributions of a robust compliance program to the regulatory, practical, and cultural aspects of this task are great, compliance officers stand to gain great insight from studying commentary from the field of management theory.