Conflicts of interest and industry culture

In the C&E world, culture most often refers to the culture of an organization.  In this connection, an earlier post discussed how permitting COI violations near the top of an organization can undermine the sense of “organizational justice” among employees generally – and thereby diminish the C&E program as a whole.

C&E-related culture also commonly refers to the culture of a given geography.  For instance, as this prior guest post by Judith Irwin of the Institute of Business Ethics describes, in some places what is considered a COI by Western standards might be seen an ethical mandate in other places.  (“Take the example of nepotism in Africa. In Africa, where family bonds are highly valued, nepotism is a common practice, and an employee may face ostracism for not hiring a relative for a position at the firm.”)

But there is also a third dimension to the intersection of culture and C&E that is too often overlooked: industry culture.

An example of this unrelated to COIs is that in the chemical industry some years ago there seemed to be a culture that encouraged sharing of information among competitors.  This contributed, predictably,  to a high incidence of antitrust violations.

And, industry culture can be relevant to COI risks, too.  For instance, the advertising business (at least in the U.S.)  is one in which gift giving/entertaining is pretty prevalent and so even an organization that has strong COI policies may wish to devote extra C&E-related attention to its employees (typically in marketing or procurement) who interact with members of that industry. (The Wal-Mart ad agency case from a few years back – discussed briefly here  – offers a pretty good lesson in how important that can be.)

Beyond the COI risks that industry culture can create in a company’s functions (as in the advertising example) culture can be risk causing vis a vis distinct business lines or units within a company, particularly a large decentralized one. So, for example, a large energy company whose principal business is a regulated utility that needs to maintain the trust of key regulators should be mindful of  the reputational danger of a casual approach to COIs in its unregulated subsidiaries. (Note that this sort of situation can also involve “moral hazard” –  a topic of occasional discussion in this blog.  Specifically, the risks of adversely impacting the interests of the organization as a whole might not be fully felt by the risk-taking unregulated business.)

As a general matter industry culture is not as significant a cause of risk as organizational or geographical culture.  But it can be potent, particularly in industries with a high degree of inter-company mobility, such as financial services.  And,  industry culture should be considered in all organizations’ COI risk assessments.