Good People Doing Bad Things

Nearly all major corporations and many public agencies have established ethics and compliance departments, some of them as the result of penalties imposed by the US Department of Justice, others due to embarrassing scandals. The responsibilities of these departments range from inculcating codes of conduct and preventing bribery, to impeding litigation for harassment and bribes, or ensuring that government certifications and branch standards are followed. For the compliance officer, ethics breaches are not due to unethical persons, but inadequate compliance training. This article, based on fieldwork in compliance training conferences, anti-corruption events and readings of ethics and compliance manuals, describes how a ‘culture of compliance’ is pursued in organisations. In the wake of continuing ethics breaches, are these regimes genuine efforts to ‘do the right thing’, or simply a façade to improve firms’ reputations? Compliance can be both real and fake, and the compliance function must ensure where the latter is authentic and where it can be ignored.