Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics Release Benchmarking Survey on Third Party Controls
The Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE) has released the results of a benchmarking survey finding that despite the proliferation of third party relationships in business, relatively few companies set ethics and compliance expectations on the companies that they rely on to act on their behalf.
The SCCE survey found that only about half of companies (47%) disseminate their internal employee code of conduct to third parties. Just 26% require that third parties certify to their codes of conduct, and only 17% of organization have a code of conduct that is applicable to third parties.
The survey data comes from research fielded by the SCCE in January 2009 among compliance and ethics professionals at private, public, non-profit and governmental institutions. More than 400 responses to the survey were filed.
"Companies have really stepped up their activities internally when it comes to compliance and ethics," said SCCE CEO Roy Snell. "But we're just not seeing the same level of commitment by companies when it comes to managing third parties. There's a great deal of risk there, as [recent FCPA] cases have shown. Companies risk both wrong doing occurring on their behalf, and substantial liability that might have been mitigated by a more rigorous approach."
The complete survey can be accessed here (free registration required).
Labels: FCPA
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