Business Ethics

Intel constructs powerful agenda for new initiatives

Despite lofty positions on various best-of corporate responsibility and sustainability rankings, including the No. 1 slot on CRO’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens 2008 list, chip maker Intel—led in its CR efforts by Dave Stangis, its Director of Corporate Responsibility—believes its efforts are still a work in progress.

These planned improvements come at a time when various antitrust lawsuits against the company and an anti-competition investigation recently launched by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reach critical mass.

Figure out what you want to do, then the organizational form will follow

Want to understand the recent history of business? Just look at the expansion of the executive suite over the past couple of decades. The 1990s saw the advent of the Chief Information Officer as companies realized that technology had crossed the line from back-office obscurity to strategic priority. Then, in 2002, the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other regulatory pressures brought a host of Chief Compliance Officers in its wake. We’ve seen Chief Strategy Officers, Chief Accounting Officers and Chief People Officers.

And now, corporate responsibility (CR), sustainability and climate-change concerns have become the latest big issue driving the exploration of new executive roles.

CEOs see long-term benefits in a ‘New Deal’

Companies have made their environmental, social and ethical performance a priority over the past decade. Despite a softening economy, three factors guarantee that corporate responsibility is here to stay: A “New Deal” between corporations, governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); Millennials; and globalization.

Conflicts of interest, generational disparity hot topics for university, business initiative

Business and education leaders in Omaha, Neb., launched a community-wide initiative to create what they envision as a “world class center for Superior Business Ethics”—the Greater Omaha Alliance for Business Ethics at Creighton University.

Andy Bryant told Spring CRO Conference guests about embracing corporate culture in an era of potential Internet infamy

Being a good corporate citizen can be a combative and transformative endeavor and nearly 300 advocates of the art form gathered at the Spring CRO Conference at the Union League Club in Manhattan March 27 to hear corporate responsibility veterans relay their war stories, advice and battle plans for sustaining the drive. In his morning keynote address, Andy Bryant, Intel’s Chief Administrative Officer, said the chip maker’s goal has been to create a corporate responsibility culture.

Former WorldCom VP Cynthia Cooper spoke at the CRO Spring Conference of ethical choices, loyalty and recovery after company collapse

Cynthia Cooper said she was having her hair done at a salon one morning in 2002 near her home in Mississippi when WorldCom Chief Financial Officer Scott Sullivan called her up and “chastised” her for informing the company’s auditor, Arthur Andersen, about improper accounting entries and transfers for line costs that had no support or foundation. The dressing down from Sullivan was only the beginning of the rough treatment and periods of duress for Cooper, then WorldCom’s Vice President of Internal Audit.

Cynthia Cooper’s new book on WorldCom details inside story of firm’s historic fall

Cynthia Cooper would not buckle under the pressure. In 2002, Cooper was Vice President of Internal Audit at WorldCom when she uncovered company officials’ use of something other than generally accepted accounting principles. Time magazine named Cooper one of its “Persons of the Year 2002.”

Following is an excerpt from her new book, “Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower” (Wiley). The excerpt from Chapter 23, “The Confrontation,” revolves around an audit committee meeting with CFO Scott Sullivan, Cooper and others on June 20, 2002.