The importance of business integrity.

 

BUSINESS INTEGRITY


Besides obvious ethical obligations and human rights considerations, there is a clear business case for fighting corruption. From a company perspective, preventing corruption is a critical component of risk
management and business performance. Scandals, legal proceedings, or fines linked to corruption
not only create significant financial damage for a company in the form of fines and penalties or legal
costs, but also damage its reputation and can lead to debarment from government contracts and loss of
trust from employees, customers and stakeholders.
Equally, an environment of business integrity creates a positive organizational culture, and helps to
recruit and retain talent, in addition to improving relationships with overall stakeholders including
customers, investors, regulators and influencers. At the market level, efforts to fight corruption are a prerequisite to ensuring fair competition and a level playing field for all. From a macroeconomic point of view, corruption - or a high perception thereof - undermines an enabling business environment and acts as a disincentive for people to invest and take risks, which ultimately hampers growth, innovation, and competitiveness. This shows in the fact that the worst performers in the corruption perception index usually also rank lowest in the Human Development Index of the United Nations Development Program. It is thus in the best interest of companies to take measures that proactively deter, detect, and prevent corruption, both within their own organization and the stakeholders they engage with.






Location: 1776 I St NW #450, Washington, DC 20006, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The role of education in promoting integrity.

Image
  Everyone has a set of values, based on their family, social, cultural, religious, or political context. Education can both raise awareness on prevalent values and their impact and promote universal values. Therefore, education and training are cornerstones for building a culture of integrity in society. They can serve as means to raise awareness of the devastating effects of corruption , reduce societal tolerance of corrupt practices and equip people with the knowledge and skills to recognize, prevent and resist corruption. Teaching young people about integrity has the potential to shape the future by shaping societal norms. For a meaningful change, however, a culture of integrity should be mainstreamed in relevant education modules amongst all age groups, and action needs to go beyond government and involve individuals, civil society organizations and companies. All the key international conventions and standards on fighting corruption acknowledge the important role of educatio...
Read more

A snapshot of the ways in which companies and relevant organizations leverage education and training in their efforts to promote integrit

Image
  Some concrete use cases collected from companies and other relevant organizations from across the global network of Business at OECD. They provide a snapshot of the many ways in which these organizations leverage education and training in their efforts to promote integrity. Of course, this list of examples is non exhaustive and does not claim to provide a complete picture of existing programs. The following use cases were obtained:
Read more