{"id":12,"date":"2017-01-25T16:22:14","date_gmt":"2017-01-25T15:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/compliance-and-managers-accountabilty\/?p=12"},"modified":"2017-01-25T16:24:19","modified_gmt":"2017-01-25T15:24:19","slug":"cosmetic-or-substantial-compliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/compliance-and-managers-accountabilty\/2017\/01\/25\/cosmetic-or-substantial-compliance\/","title":{"rendered":"Cosmetic or Substantial Compliance?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During the last ten years, I had the possibility to analyze, for research or consulting reasons, hundreds of <strong>compliance models of companies<\/strong> operating in Europe, North America, Africa and Latina America.<\/p>\n<p>Let me share with you a very simple statistics: <strong>over 95% of them adopted a compliance approach that I define in my courses as \u201ccosmetic\u201d<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>What I mean with that? <strong>Cosmetic compliance is when a company undertakes actions just to apparently comply with the requests of the national legislator(s)<\/strong>. Cosmetic compliance does not seriously review internal and external activities of the company to identify possible <strong>threats<\/strong>, <strong>risks<\/strong> and <strong>weaknesses<\/strong>; on the contrary, it is just an eccentric corporate maquillage exercise.<\/p>\n<p>I know, I know: your company is too busy to <strong>manage the complexity<\/strong> and turbulence of this difficult period. Recent years have been extremely though for you. The commercial division does not allow anyone to slow down or complicate daily operations. The <strong>market is a jungle<\/strong> and there is no time for <strong>compliance and ethics<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Do you know what? <strong>I heard those phrases many times<\/strong>, unfortunately, in many situations I was serving as expert witness <strong>in a civil or criminal trial against a company<\/strong> and\/or its top managers.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/compliance-and-managers-accountabilty\/files\/2017\/01\/Corruption-index.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-22 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/compliance-and-managers-accountabilty\/files\/2017\/01\/Corruption-index.jpg\" alt=\"Corruption Index\" width=\"940\" height=\"580\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/compliance-and-managers-accountabilty\/files\/2017\/01\/Corruption-index.jpg 940w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/compliance-and-managers-accountabilty\/files\/2017\/01\/Corruption-index-300x185.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/compliance-and-managers-accountabilty\/files\/2017\/01\/Corruption-index-768x474.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/compliance-and-managers-accountabilty\/files\/2017\/01\/Corruption-index-500x309.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 940px) 100vw, 940px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>What is the problem with cosmetic compliance?<\/strong> The simple answer is that your company is not managing in a proper way <strong>the risks associated with corruption and corporate malpractice<\/strong>. But, in such a case, there are at least three main issues that are worth of your attention.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>First, <strong>your organization is not properly protecting itself from internal and external threats<\/strong>. Let me use an analogy: imagine you move to a risky country where locals kidnap people. Wouldn\u2019t you contract a very good security service for you and your employees? I think that the analogy is pretty clear: don\u2019t you think that your company is highly exposed to corruption-related problems in one way or the other?, So, don\u2019t you really need a good security service, that is an appropriate, well-working compliance system? Well, if you have any doubt, please, look below at the most recent transparency international corruption map&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>The second is that <strong>you are not responsibly protecting your employees, exposing them to very difficult situations<\/strong>. Imagine the pressure of your commercial guys operating in some very problematic countries and market segments\u2026 Do you really believe that it is responsible to abandon them with just a cosmetic code of conduct, cosmetic anti-bribe procedures and cosmetic corporate attitudes?<\/li>\n<li>The third issue, which is the most important for me, is that <strong>your organization is underestimating the importance of ethics<\/strong>. Compliance is for many respected experts of the field a tool to achieve <strong>a much important objective: developing an ethical organization<\/strong>, where important values such as <strong>justice<\/strong> and the <strong>respect of people<\/strong> are operationalized in a tangible and impactful way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We should never forget that the fundamental premise of compliance practice is <strong>prevention<\/strong>. But, controls, risks mapping, code of conducts and all other compliance tools should be used in a <strong>substantial<\/strong> way: changing corporate practices in order to fundamentally impact <strong>people\u2019s conscience and attitudes.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During the last ten years, I had the possibility to analyze, for research or consulting reasons, hundreds of compliance models of companies operating in Europe, North America, Africa and Latina America. Let me share with you a very simple statistics: over 95% of them adopted a compliance approach that I define in my courses as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":354,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[82892,461,618],"tags":[461,102286,618],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-compliance","category-corruption","category-ethics","tag-corruption","tag-cosmetic-compliance","tag-ethics","megacategoria-mc-business-ethics-and-corporate-social-responsibility"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/compliance-and-managers-accountabilty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/compliance-and-managers-accountabilty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/compliance-and-managers-accountabilty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/compliance-and-managers-accountabilty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/compliance-and-managers-accountabilty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/compliance-and-managers-accountabilty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/compliance-and-managers-accountabilty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions\/24"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/compliance-and-managers-accountabilty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/compliance-and-managers-accountabilty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/compliance-and-managers-accountabilty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/compliance-and-managers-accountabilty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}