Compliance Culture

Practical insights for compliance and ethics professionals and commentary on the intersection of compliance and culture.

Corporate takedowns: Gawker

This is the final entry in a series of four posts about corporate takedowns.  The first post was about American Apparel.  The second post was about Theranos.  Last week’s post was about the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica data sharing scandal.  Today’s post will discuss Gawker.

Gawker was a blog website focused on New York City celebrity and media news and gossip.  It was launched in 2002 and was a popular source of often controversial content about famous people and prominent organizations.  Gawker faced first public scrutiny and later legal battles about posting videos, e-mails, and other private information that was suspected to have been improperly obtained or in violation of confidentiality or copyright interests.  In 2016, the end of a protracted legal battle over one such posting led to a $140 million legal judgment against Gawker and the company’s resulting bankruptcy.

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Values and interests in decision-making

Samantha Power is an academic and author who was the United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017.

Power’s diplomacy is founded in her career origins as a journalist covering the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s as a war correspondent for various publications.  Later, Power became a professor and then a foreign policy fellow and advisor working for Barack Obama, and was then appointed to the National Security Council before her nomination as the ambassador to the UN.

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Happy Easter – and a look at the second book of Mere Christianity

Happy Easter from Compliance Culture!

In honor of the holiday, please check out the below extracts from the seminal work of C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, which are especially pertinent to ethics and morality.  For commentary on the first book of Mere Christianity, check out this post.  The below post contains selections from the second book of Mere Christianity.

Book II of Mere Christianity, “What Christians Believe,” explains the points which were persuasive to Lewis as he turned away from atheism and toward Christian devotion.  Lewis reckons with this personal transformation through logic and by seeking to make the abstract and unknowable both concrete and comprehensible where possible while relevant if not fully within the reach of human understanding.

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Happy Good Friday! – and a look at the first book of Mere Christianity

Happy Good Friday from Compliance Culture!

In honor of the holiday, please check out the below extracts from the seminal work of C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, which are especially pertinent to ethics and morality.

Mere Christianity contains insights which are so powerful for people to consider in expressing and understanding their own personal codes of ethics and values (even completely secular ones).  Individual commitments to a well-defined internal moral register form the foundation of any integrity-led organization with an ethical business culture.  This post contains selections from the first book of Mere Christianity. 

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Round-up on compliance issues with online platforms: Twitter

This is the fourth in a series of six posts on compliance issues with various online platforms.  The first post was about YouTube.  The second post was about Facebook.  Last week’s post discussed Instagram.  Today’s post will focus on Twitter.  On April 5, the fifth post in the series will cover Snapchat.  The sixth and last post in the series, on April 12, will be about Reddit.

Twitter, one of the best-known social media platforms and a popular news and networking service, was created in 2006. Within a few years, Twitter rapidly became one of the most frequently-visited websites in the world. Twitter is widely used all over the world as a source of breaking news as well as a social messaging service and a content-sharing platform for photos, videos, links, and microblogs in threaded comments.

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Starbucks and CSR

Starbucks is one of the best-known companies and brands in the world. The success of Starbucks in the global market is not just, or even mainly, about the popularity of the coffees, teas, and snacks it serves to guests. Customers want to know where companies like Starbucks stand on social and political issues too. They’re eager to engage with the business values and cultural strategy of the company, in order to distinguish the choice for Starbucks over any of its many other competitors they could patronize for a drink or a pastry instead.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a prominent strategic consideration for many companies. Authentic and convincing expression of CSR values can gain the attention and appreciation of consumers, competitors, and stakeholders. For a broad overview on the importance of inspiring this engagement for organizations seeking to use their interest in activism or social justice issues, check out this post on CSR tips for compliance programs.

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Round-up on compliance issues with online platforms: Instagram

This is the third in a series of six posts on compliance issues with various online platforms.  The first post was about YouTube.  Last week’s post was about Facebook.  Today’s post, the third in the series, will discuss Instagram.  Next week’s post will focus on Twitter.  On April 5, the fifth post in the series will cover Snapchat.  The sixth and last post in the series, on April 12, will be about Reddit.

The photo and video sharing and social media service Instagram was created in 2010 and has been owned by Facebook since 2012. Instagram has evolved massively in popularity, adding users exponentially year after year, and creating features which have inspired huge engagement and imitation on other platforms to take advantage of popular usage of the app, such as thematic hashtags and aesthetically curated content.

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Corporate cultural change: Concrete and values-based policies

This is the third in a series of five posts suggesting best practices for implementing corporate cultural change.  For an overview of all the tips on this subject, check out this preview post.  The first post in the series discussed tone and conduct at the top.  Last week’s post was about the importance of consistent, visible enforcement.  Today’s post will discuss strategies for creating and implementing effective policies.  The fourth post in the series, on March 19, will focus on putting in place procedures that are complementary to those policies.  Finally, on March 27, the fifth and final post will discuss tips for going beyond training in order to create effective and engaging employee education initiatives to boost awareness and compliance culture.

As discussed in the last two posts in this series, concrete changes to organizational culture cannot be accomplished through mere rhetoric, even when it is underlaid by sincere desire for progress.  Compliance program best practices must be observed and supported by senior management and top leadership in order for effective controls and cultural values to take root throughout the organization.

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Integrity of game play: Referee bias

This is the third in a series of five posts on the topic of integrity of game play.  The first post discussed the impact of various types of player misconduct on sportsmanship and game outcomes.  Last week’s post debated whether tanking can be ethical and looked at numerous examples of tanking across different sports to compare how it happens and what its effect is. Today’s post is about referee bias and how it affects games, players, and teams.  The fourth post, on March 14, will be about organizational cheating operations by teams.  The fifth post and the last in the series, on March 21, will be about unethical leadership of coaches.

Teams and their fans often accuse referees of being biased or making unfair calls. Whenever players or spectators disagree with the call made or penalty assessed – which, for those on the wrong side of the outcome of the decision, is not all that rare – bias is often suspected or assumed.

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