DEALING WITH WHITE COLLAR CRIME

ESTABLISHING AN ETHICAL CULTURE

The success of any organisation is dependent on the quality of the decisions and the behaviour of individuals at all levels throughout the organisation. White Collar Crime will undermine the right decisions and positive work ethic. The foundation of any successful fight against white collar crime is an ethical culture within the institution.

 In order to establish such an ethical culture, management and employees together must believe:

• that their institution is honest and ethical in its business dealings, including dealings with customers, suppliers and employees;
• that their employer treats them with respect, rewards them fairly, imposes discipline fairly, and, where regrettably redundancy becomes necessary, exits them fairly;
• that commercial crime prevention is a common objective throughout the organisation at all levels, that they have been trained to play their part in the fight, and that their efforts are acknowledged;
• that if White Collar or commercial crime is suspected, the perpetrator can expect the most rigorous investigation and if found guilty, a severe sentence.

 The culture of an organization is set by top management. When the directors are themselves involved in fraud or unacceptable standards of business behaviour, employees at all levels are more easily able to justify their own dishonesty. It follows that if an organization is to combat white collar crime, management should first look inwards and adopt standards that are scrupulously honest and fair.

 It is vital that the organisation demonstrates its honest, ethical intent. With this in mind many organisations are adopting formal statements of principles. In this respect: Business against Crime recommends: 

• A charter along the lines of that at Appendix 1;

• and A statement of business principles, the main parts of which are at Appendix 2.

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