IRS - Integrity Management

'Current integrity approaches are too fragmented and too confined to anchor sustainable integrity in organisations.'

Are current integrity measures sufficient?

Of course, ethics in business sounds great. And no one will deny that the integrity of an organization is important. Many organizations do invest in integrity issues. Codes of Conduct are a widely implemented tool to get employees familiar with the ethical standards of their company. Whistle blower regulations are introduced, confidential consultation is realised, ethical dilemma trainings are given and reported fraudulent practices are professionally investigated.

But are these measures in the end robust enough to guarantee the ethical quality of the organization? Are these measures for instance an assurance for excessive wrongdoing not to occur? Are they providing reliable information about the actual ethics of employees in day-to-day reality? Are they a good basis for the management team to state that their company truly is of high ethical standard?

believe that they are not. We think that current integrity approaches are insufficient to realise and guarantee the genuine ethical quality of the organization which is needed. Existing integrity approaches form a good starting point, yet they are too fragmented, too confined and too superficial to secure sustainable integrity in the organization. A strong, substantive and balanced integrity system offers a way to keep the organization a step ahead of its competitors and safeguard its business continuity.

The Integrity Approach of IRS

From the extensive experience of the people of IRS we have developed a balanced view on integrity in organizations. The many forensic cases we have investigated have learned us where the weak spots in organizations lie. From our experience with the restructuring of companies and our mediation in cases of bankruptcy we know the causes of things that can go terribly wrong in organizations. The constantly returning message we get is that managing the behaviour of people is the biggest challenge in the way to a sustainable organization. For example, control mechanisms and audits can be out-and-out sophisticated, if people engage in conspiracy these controls become completely powerless. Different from what accountancy reports make believe, fraudulent behaviour then keeps existing.

Organizations can win much if they get more in touch with the daily routine of people on the work floor. A wealth of information can be retracted from here. Because employees often know exactly what happens in their direct surrounding and can unfailingly point to the places where possible wrongdoing occurs. It is the art to get this knowledge out in the open and deploy the right policies to use this information.

It is our conviction that the neglect of the risk which the human “factor” in organizations forms, can grow into a serious danger to the organization’s business continuity. The usual efforts organizations have made the past years to protect their processes and systems against abuse, fraudulent practices and so on, therefore ask for additional attention to the area of human behaviour. Investment in the human capital and commitment to the managing of (individual) ethical behaviour is indispensable for this undertaking.

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