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Reducing Antitrust Violations: Do Codes of Conduct and Compliance Training Make a Difference?

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Competition Law Compliance Programmes

Abstract

In the light of an increasing severity of antitrust enforcement it is of paramount importance to ensure employees’ adherence to competition laws. In many firms, codes of conduct and compliance training are part of intense and widespread efforts to address this issue. Still, violations of antitrust laws occur, making headlines, and causing substantial financial and reputational damages. This raises the questions how effective codes of conduct and compliance training are, and how they must be designed to prevent antitrust incidents best. This chapter answers these questions based on new data obtained from a factorial survey in a European multinational firm. Our results indicate that managers are sometimes unaware that some business situations may constitute a violation of antitrust laws. Codes of conduct along with supplementary compliance training improve this awareness. However, they should be complemented by further compliance measures.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The actual tradeoff between financial gains and the financial and non-financial costs might show that cartels pay off.

  2. 2.

    Violations of antitrust regulations are in Germany unlawful, but not criminal, so criminal law does not apply, which strongly affects the possible sanctions actors would have to face. In the US, antitrust violations are criminal. We chose the term unlawful, to cover both situations.

  3. 3.

    In the case of the cartel among suppliers of optical disc drives, the EU found that “The companies were aware that their behavior was illegal and tried to conceal their contacts and to evade detection of their arrangements. For example, they avoided naming the competitors concerned in their internal correspondence but used abbreviations or generic names. The cartelists also avoided leaving traces of anticompetitive arrangements by preferring face-to-face meetings and ensured that the competitors’ discussions were not revealed to customers. Some of them met in places where they could not be easily spotted, including in parking lots or cinemas.” European Commission (2015).

  4. 4.

    A firm with a specific corporate culture may, on the one hand, install a certain code, and on the other hand, attract certain managers as employees, who chose the firm specifically because of its corporate culture, making the causal link between the code and ethically correct behaviour problematic. The code’s effectiveness can only be established, if it affects the behaviour of a randomly chosen group of managers.

  5. 5.

    Social desirability was measured using the Impression Management Scale developed by Winkler et al. (2006), based on earlier work by Paulhus (1984, 1991). Including the measurement indicates persistent and strong effects of social desirability in the study, indicating that controlling for social desirability is obligatory in studies conducted in the workplace setting. Social desirability is, perhaps little surprisingly, much less of an issue in studies using student samples.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Peter Kotzian, Thomas Stöber & Barbara E. Weißenberger

Authors
  1. Peter Kotzian
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  2. Thomas Stöber
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  3. Barbara E. Weißenberger
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Peter Kotzian .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics and Business, Justus-Liebig-University, Gießen, Germany

    Johannes Paha

Appendices

Appendix 1: The Different Types of Codes of Conduct Used in Our Study

We manipulated the design characteristics of codes of conduct, using the same content, oriented at the content of the firm’s current code, and manipulated several isolated design elements. The 11 experimental conditions, used for the vignette experiment, for which the effectiveness of the code for decision making was the object, and the survey, for which the effects of the code on the working climate and the relationship between the manager and the firm was the focus, were:

  1. 1.

    Baseline treatment (the participants received no code of conduct; only for the vignette experiment)

  2. 2.

    Code with an external whistle-blowing system

  3. 3.

    Code with an internal whistle-blowing system

  4. 4.

    Code with positive pictures (showing appropriate behavior)

  5. 5.

    Code with negative pictures (showing inappropriate behavior)

  6. 6.

    Code with a foreword and a conclusion that emphasize the commandment not to violate any regulations (boundary system)

  7. 7.

    Code with a foreword and a conclusion that emphasize the company values (belief system)

  8. 8.

    Code with positive text examples (descriptions of appropriate behavior)

  9. 9.

    Code with negative text examples (descriptions of inappropriate behavior)

  10. 10.

    Unambiguous code (‘code of ethics’) with strict regulations (no room for maneuver) and signed by the management board members

  11. 11.

    Unambiguous code (‘code of ethics’) with strict regulations (no room for maneuver) and without any signatures by the management board

Appendix 2: Measurement of Independent Variables

 

N (valid)

Min

Max

Mean

Std. Dev.

Dummy variables indicating functional background

Research

1005

0

1

0.35

0.48

Sales/Marketing

1005

0

1

0.07

0.26

Operations

1005

0

1

0.23

0.42

Purchasing

1005

0

1

0.02

0.13

Finance

1005

0

1

0.05

0.23

Human Resources

1005

0

1

0.03

0.16

Dummy variables indicating regional background

Europe w/o Germany

1005

0

1

0.21

0.41

Asia-Pacific

1005

0

1

0.30

0.46

Americas

1005

0

1

0.02

0.13

Japan

1005

0

1

0.00

0.04

Personal features of participants

Hierarchy level (1 = lowest, 5 = highest category)

1005

1

5

1.84

1.14

Sex (with 1 = Female and 0 = Male)

1005

0

1

0.24

0.43

Impression management (high values = tendency to answer socially acceptable)

1005

3

18

13.79

2.82

Work experience (total work experience in years)

1005

1

45

18.54

9.25

Participation and evaluation of compliance training

Number of compliance training sessions attended (total number)

1005

0

4

1.60

0.96

Usefulness of compliance training (high values indicate perceived usefulness)

901

1

6

4.54

1.40

Dummy variables indicating types of compliance training completed

Participation in general training

1005

0

1

0.83

0.37

Participation in antitrust training

1005

0

1

0.45

0.50

Participation in anticorruption training

1005

0

1

0.29

0.46

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Kotzian, P., Stöber, T., Weißenberger, B.E. (2016). Reducing Antitrust Violations: Do Codes of Conduct and Compliance Training Make a Difference?. In: Paha, J. (eds) Competition Law Compliance Programmes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44633-2_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44633-2_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-44632-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-44633-2

  • eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)

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