Reconceptualising Corporate Compliance

This book offers a comprehensive examination of the issues surrounding corporate compliance. Should corporations comply with the spirit or the letter of the law? What role does compliance play in a capitalist market economy? Why is it that otherwise law-abiding citizens are willing to implement corporate compliance strategies that are seemingly at odds with their personal values? Dr Donovan responds to these questions and more, providing a persuasive argument for the legitimate role of spirited compliance within a market economy. In doing so, she employs the lens of classical liberal ideology, challenging the widespread view that technical compliance is simply 'capitalism.' In an examination that has relevance beyond the compliance arena, the author also explores how the architecture of the firm facilitates the often atypical compliance decisions that individuals make when acting within a corporate setting. The book draws on social psychology to offer important insights into how the often-elusive goal of corporate behavioural change can be achieved, for the benefit of both the market and society as a whole.

"This book offers a comprehensive examination of the issues surrounding corporate compliance. Corporate compliance standards are often the subject of significant public debate. Recent media scrutiny of the tax strategies of complex multinationals revealed that, notwithstanding prior scandals such as Enron, Worldcom and Parmalat, corporations continue to adopt compliance practices that, whilst technically legal, fundamentally undermine the intention (or spirit) of the law. However, the question of corporate compliance is not simply a matter of fiscal policy but goes to the core of our understanding of corporate responsibility within society. As we enter the fourth industrial revolution, and as we continue to bear witness, these matters remain of fundamental and pressing importance. Yet why is it that technical compliance is so widely rejected by society yet so widely adopted and defended by corporate actors? Why is it that regulatory responses to each corporate scandal seem unable to prevent future transgressions? Why is it that otherwise law-abiding citizens act contrary to their personal values when making compliance decisions within a corporation? In this book, Dr Donovan responds to these questions by providing a persuasive argument for the legitimate role of spirited compliance within a market economy. In doing so, she employs the lens of classical liberal ideology, challenging the widespread view that technical compliance is simply 'capitalism.' However, finding a normative foundation for spirited compliance only addresses one part of the problem. In an examination that has relevance beyond the compliance arena, the author also explores why and how corporate architecture contributes to the often atypical decisions that individuals make when acting within a corporate environment. The book draws upon behavioural psychology to answer this question and offers insights into how the often-elusive goal of corporate behavioural change can be achieved"--

This edited volume presents an innovative and critical analysis of corporate compliance from an interdisciplinary and international perspective. It defines the historical framework and the various roles played by corporate compliance in today's context. It questions how different cultures affect economic behaviors and under which conditions the individual choices may be directed toward law-abiding behavior. Examining corporate compliance as a tool of criminal and regulatory policy strategies in different countries and sectors, this book also aims to provide a picture of the dimension and scope of the public-private partnership, focusing on the prevention and detection of corporate crimes. It analyzes the effects of corporate compliance on the internal organization in terms of cost-benefit assessment, as well as the opportunities in technical innovation for detecting and controlling risk.

How to induce corporate compliance with regulations? Harsh punishments will cause companies to disguise violations, and mild punishments will cause companies to report their violations and make weak efforts to avoid them. In this book, Sharon Oded canvasses the history of thinking about corporate compliance, and he proposes his own candidate for the best law. This is a sophisticated account of legal incentives that will repay any reader interested in corporate compliance. Robert Cooter, University of California, Berkeley, US The effective control of corporate misconduct is a vital but elusive task for regulators, given the complexity of organization structures and the need to find the right balance between deterrent- and cooperative-based enforcement policies. In this powerful and comprehensive study, Sharon Oded argues for combining different approaches and boldly advocates, in particular, the use of third-party independent corporate monitoring firms to implement self-policing strategies. This will be essential reading for those involved in the theory or practice of regulatory corporate enforcement. Anthony Ogus, University of Manchester, UK and University of Rotterdam, The Netherlands This book considers how a regulatory enforcement policy should be designed to efficiently induce proactive corporate compliance. It first explores two major schools of thought regarding law enforcement, both the deterrence and cooperative approaches, and shows that neither of these represents an optimal regulatory enforcement paradigm from a social welfare perspective. It provides a critical analysis of recent developments in US Federal corporate liability regimes, and proposes a generic framework that better tailors sanction schemes and monitoring systems to regulatee performance. The proposed framework efficiently induces corporate proactive compliance, while maintaining an optimal level of deterrence. This insightful book will appeal to academics in law and economics, behavioral economics, criminology, and business, as well as to practitioners and policymakers.

Traditionally, control in organizations is concerned with top-down approaches, where executives attempt to direct their employees’ attention, behaviors, and performance to align with the organization’s goals and objectives. This book takes a new approach by turning the problem of control upside down as it focuses on control of executives who find white-collar crime convenient. The bottom-up approach to executive compliance focuses on organizational measures to make white-collar crime less convenient for potential offenders. Rather than focusing on the regulatory formalities and staged procedures of compliance and audits, the book emphasizes the organizational challenges involved in compliance work when trusted corporate officials exhibit deviant behavior, refining, and advancing knowledge in this field by reference to contemporary international case studies and associated original evaluative research. The themes and cases covered are carefully selected to provide the reader with an insight into professional conduct and procedural practice – the organization of corporate compliance success, failure, and corruption – with the theory of convenience placed at the fore. It is the bottom-up approach by application of convenience theory that makes the proposed book unique compared to other books on corporate compliance. This book is a valuable resource for scholars and upper-level students researching and studying in the areas of business administration, organizational behavior, corporate and white-collar crime, as well as business ethics and auditing.

This versatile casebook covers corporate compliance generally, allowing professors to tailor the course as narrowly or as broadly as they prefer. The assignments in the casebook help professors verify that their students understand the topics and are able to apply the skills acquired practically. The book covers creating an ¿effective¿ compliance program, as well as ethics awareness; corporate governance; risk assessment; compliance training; testing and surveillance; auditing, monitoring, and reporting; global codes of conduct; and corporate compliance links to attorney-client privilege, records management, internal investigations, and crisis management.