Fraud and corruption cases can have a direct impact on profit and costs and a negative impact on society at large. In addition, such cases can influence brand value and customer and employee loyalty.
The UN Global Compact Principles regarding Anti-corruption
OECD Business Approaches to Combating Corrupt Practices
Transparency International’s Business Principles for Countering Bribery
The COSO Internal Control Framework
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, section 404.
The requirements and recommendations have been translated into elements of a management system. The assessment tool is structured around the ISO improvement loop and consists of five key activities: strategy and policy setting; planning; implementation and operation; measuring and monitoring; management review.
The assessment generates a profile and a snapshot of how resistant an organisation, corporation or entity is to the effects and impact of fraud and corruption and benchmarks these against widely accepted conventions, principles and guidelines in the field of fraud and corruption prevention.
DNV Assessment
At the beginning of 2007, DNV assessed the ability of its own management systems to resist fraud and corruption using this tool. The assessment team conducted 33 interviews with 51 participants at DNV’s head office in Norway (Oslo), in DNV Brazil (Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo) and DNV Singapore. The assessment covered all levels of the organisation and business areas.
The tool provided an impression of how well developed the DNV management system is with regard to fraud and corruption prevention and established a basis for further improvements. The assessment showed a high score for elements such as management of incidents. It indicated, however, that DNV could be more proactive with regard to risk assessment and the implementation of controls and training and awareness programmes to combat fraud and corruption.
In 2007, a significant focus was put on improving the awareness of and training to prevent internal fraud and corruption. New guidelines that support DNV’s anti-corruption instructions have been developed. These describe the Best Practices and include practical examples of what is considered acceptable or unacceptable in business relationships with customers and suppliers. The guidelines are based on a survey among DNV Country Chairs, best practices as described by the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO), Transparency International’s Business principles for countering bribery, and the ICC Commission on Anti-Corruption.
Dealing with dilemmas
The anti-corruption instructions and guidelines deal with several difficult topics that require personal judgement which may be influenced by local business practices and culture. As these documents cannot cover all workplace situations, a workshop programme has also been developed to provide further guidance to employees when dealing with dilemmas. The objective of the dilemma training programme is to encourage transparency and increase the interest in and awareness of picking up, reflecting and deciding on operational dilemmas that employees are faced with in the organisation. The programme is based on workshops and a short e-primer that presents some dilemmas in order to trigger discussions. The programme is planned to be rolled out in 2008.