Whatever your organizational level

Whatever your organizational level, you should find the information in this chapter helpful. If you’re at a high organization level, it should give you ideas about how to manage ethics and legal compliance in your firm. If you’re at a lower or middle management level, it should help you understand your own organization’s approach to ethics management and how it compares to what other organizations are currently doing. If you’re a student, it will help you think about what to look for during the job search.

In preparing this chapter, we spoke with executives from six companies in a variety of industries: Lockheed Martin Corporation  United Technologies Merck & Co., Inc.   Staples  and USAA  We are grateful to these executives for their time and contributions to this book. These companies range in size and ownership from USAA, an insurance and financial services company with 22,000 employees at four U.S. locations and two overseas offices, to United Technologies, which has over 200,000 employees  and a presence in more than 180 countries. Staples has more than 91,000 associates in 27 countries. Merck has 106,000 employees in 140 countries. Adelphia had 14,000 employees across the United States when its assets were purchased in 2005 by Comcast and Time Warner. Lockheed Martin has 140,000 employees and operates in 600 locations across all 50 U.S. states and internationally in 75 nations and territories. Think about the challenge of managing ethics and legal compliance in these firms, many with employees at locations around the globe. All of the companies are engaged in a variety of efforts, but their approaches differ somewhat due to differences in industries and organizational cultures. For example, some industries  are more highly regulated than others. So compliance with

laws and regulations is an important goal, and it must be managed. For many of these companies, ethics and legal compliance are closely tied to maintenance of the firm’s reputation and brand value. In such an environment, integrity becomes a key driver of corporate action.

Making Ethics Comprehensive and Holistic

The U.S. Sentencing Guidelines very clearly aim to encourage organizations to create ethics programs that drive integrity and ethical behavior in their business operations. As the guidelines have become more refined and sophisticated over time, responsible organizations have found numerous ways of making ethics and values central to how they do business. As we read in the last chapter, values like ethics and integrity become part of an organization’s culture by aligning various elements throughout the organization. Integrating any corporate value into the organizational culture starts with strong executive commitment. Once executives are clearly behind the effort, then the effort must be communicated to every employee and compliance must be measured and rewarded for the value to become part of the culture.

At Staples, the office supply giant, executives tried to capture the sentiment underpinning their ethics program by calling it ‘‘Staples Soul.’’ The Staples Soul program

brings together a number of ethics and social responsibility efforts under one umbrella, including the company’s concern for ethics, the environment, its community activities, and diversity. The Staples Soul symbol is appropriately a paper clip bent into the shape of a heart. According to company documents, ‘‘Staples Soul reflects our commitment to corporate responsibility. It’s what moves us to embrace diversity, sustain the environment, give back to our communities, and practice sound ethics. Linking all of these values with our global business strategy and operations contributes to our financial success and helps us become a great employer, corporate citizen and neighbor.’’