The U.S. and Europe
By Nate | October 16, 2006
I've long believed that corporate ethics professionals in the United States have an important role to play in their companies' corporate responsibility activities. But my suspicion has been that, unlike their European counterparts, U.S. companies, for the most part, maintain a separation between their ethics and CR efforts.
A recent food industry benchmarking project completed by Ethical Leadership Group supports this conclusion. For the most part, the participating food companies that are based in the U.S. have devoted less attention to integrating these functions, though the ethics officers we spoke to for this study all indicated both an interest in, and a recognized need for greater integration.
Similar sentiments could be heard at the recent ECOA conference in Salt Lake City, where there appeared to be a growing recognition that protection of brand and goodwill -- the job of the ethics officer -- demands more than simply compliance with the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.
I recently wrote a piece that appears in the current (October 2006) issue of Ethical Corporation magazine in which I address this issue in somewhat greater length. Click here to download a PDF of this article. In this article, I make the case that convergence of ethics and CR in the United States is necessary for the creation within companies of true cultures of integrity. I think this convergence is occurring, slowly but surely.
Whether you agree or disagree that greater integration is inevitable and important, it can't hurt you to think about the degree to which your own company has addressed or is addressing this issue. And it can't hurt to ask yourself whether you want to be on the front edge of these developments, or chasing them.