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Patricia J. Harned, PhD
President
Ethics Resource Center
It is a tenuous position to judge from the outside what is happening inside an organization. Nevertheless, HP appears more motivated than ever to learn from the past in order to take a leading role in corporate ethics and compliance in the future. Indeed, there are some very positive signs; HP has made substantial changes to the structure of its ethics and compliance program, and senior leaders have been transparent about mistakes made, lessons learned and new steps taken. In terms of its program, the high-level placement of its chief ethics and compliance officer, an Ethics and Compliance Committee that works in concert with a new Compliance Council of experts, and the strengthening of its cross-functional Global SBC team are all promising developments. HP has made significant strides toward creating a comprehensive program that can help accomplish the stated goal of “uncompromising integrity.”
The Ethics Resource Center’s 2007 National Business Ethics Survey, sponsored in part by HP, revealed that well-implemented ethics and compliance programs are effective at increasing the extent to which management is aware of wrongdoing taking place, but they are insufficient in actually reducing the amount of misconduct happening in the first place. The best programs increase employee reporting, but it is the culture of the organization that becomes the real accelerant to the mitigation of ethics risk. It is clear from public statements of its leadership that strengthening the ethical culture of HP, while respecting international differences in its global operations, is a high priority for the company. HP’s next set of immediate challenges will be to ensure that its new systems foster a strong ethical culture, to figure out how to measure this progress, and to share this complex information with all stakeholders—employees, managers, shareholders and external interest groups—in a comprehensible manner.
In the past year, I have been present several times when HP leaders have taken a public stage and talked openly about the ethics challenges of their past. I suspected this effort was primarily driven by a desire of its leadership to regain public and peer trust. I believe that HP is doing just that, with an added benefit. HP has begun to emerge as a practice leader and educator in the ethics and compliance field; many corporate leaders have benefited from HP’s lessons learned. It is my hope that this trend will continue. Even further, I envision an HP, as a global corporation with capabilities to help meet many of the world’s social and economic needs, that sets the pace for what is just now beginning to emerge as a conception of global corporate citizenship. I hope that HP shares that vision, and that the company will seize the opportunity before it.
Disclosure: HP is a paying member of the Ethics Resource Center.
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