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Corporate Ethics Officers

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Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics

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Director of integrity; Ethical leader

Organizational Ethics and Contemporary Business

More and more firms are now creating the position of Chief Ethics Officer (EO) as part of their overall ethical governance program. In the USA, the advent of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines in 1991, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), and the well-publicized corporate scandals that precipitated these legislations seemed to have provided the impetus for corporations to create the office of the ethics officer. The Sentencing Guidelines stated that companies with effective compliance and ethics programs, including the position of ethics officer, could receive preferential treatment during prosecutions for white-collar crimes.

Organizations themselves may be showing greater sensitivity to ethical issues, and corporate boards of directors no longer tolerate even minor lapses. For example, RadioShack fired its CEO for lying on his resume. Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman Patricia Dunn lost her job after...

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Correspondence to Henry Adobor .

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Adobor, H. (2019). Corporate Ethics Officers. In: Poff, D., Michalos, A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_66-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_66-1

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