It’s been a busy week at the office, but a few compliance-related stories caught my eye.
Compliance Networks as Knowledge Networks by Tom Fox
As compliance programs mature, they become less top down driven and more inculcated into the DNA of a company. The more doing business ethically and in compliance becomes part of the way your company does business, the better off you will be down the road. One of the methods that you can use is to set up a compliance network within your organization. I recently read an article in the Fall issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review, entitled “Designing Effective Knowledge Networks”, by Katrina Pugh and Laurence Prusak, in which they discussed knowledge network design as a mechanism to facilitate desired behaviors and outcomes. I found their ideas very useful in the compliance context.
What Can an Ethics Course Really Do? by Chris MacDonald
Typically, skepticism about ethics education is rooted in a mistaken view of what the goals of such education are. If you think that giving students a course in ethics is supposed to “make them into good people,” then of course you’re going to think it’s useless. An ethics professor can’t turn bad people into good ones, any more than she can turn water into wine. Luckily, that’s really not what’s needed, and so doing so it’s not the aim of any sane ethics course.
Gold dust for compliance officers by Richard L. Cassin
What’s the first thing compliance officers need to do? We’d say it’s convincing management and board members they need an effective compliance program. That’s not easy. It takes advocacy, and advocacy takes credibility.
Jury Gives SEC Split Verdict In Insider Trading – Front Running Trial by Thomas O. Gorman
The Commission was handed a split verdict in its insider trading – front running case against Siming Yang and his investment company, Prestige Trade Investments Limited by an Illinois jury yesterday. SEC v. Yang, Case No. 12-cv-02473 (N.D. Ill. Filed April 4, 2012). The jury found for the defendants and against the Commission on an insider trading claim but in favor of the SEC and against defendant Yang on a front running charge and two false filing claims.
