In March, Ethisphere hosted its 9th annual Global Ethics Summit in New York City. The Summit provided an opportunity for companies from around the world to celebrate what makes them great businesses and share best practices on how to create a corporate culture that shines above the rest.
“The belief that you’ve arrived when it comes to ethics and compliance is one of the most dangerous beliefs of all—leading directly to complacency, which leads to the erosion of a culture of integrity into mistakes becoming calamities,” said Ellen R. Marram, Lead Independent Director, Eli Lilly and Company, and Member, Board of Directors, Ford Motor Company during a keynote session at the Summit. “It’s vital that companies sustain their ethical journeys and continue to improve their cultures of integrity, through benchmarking, learning from each other and sharing best practices.”
With ethical culture and performance perennially at the heart of conversations during the Summit, a renewed dialogue focusing on topics such as leadership diversity, sports integrity and a rigorous commitment to human rights inspired the delegation to move beyond traditional compliance and governance to enhance company values, social character, stakeholder trust and collective action.
The complete archive of session recordings can be seen on the Global Ethics Summit website: https://globalethicssummit2017.com.
Gender diversity was among the hotly debated topics at this year’s Summit and it has become a key component of the ethics landscape. Companies who have made a point to address this concern are likely to score higher on the ethics scorecard and, as a result, benefit from what Ethisphere calls the Ethics Premium, which illustrates how companies that are ethical (appearing on the annual World’s Most Ethical Companies® list), on average, do six percent better financially against the S&P 500. An ethical approach, which places value on equity is not just the right thing to do, it makes good business sense.
The annual recap of the Summit captures just some of the many inspired and interactive discussions that took place over two days. Download and review our recap.
