How can I be part of an ethical fall if I work remotely?
“Oh, I work remotely! Isn’t it great?”
“We are a satellite office, so we work autonomously.”
The proud battle cry of many organizations is that they have many remote offices or workers “out there,” somewhere in the great beyond, who are working remotely. Many of these folks “telecommute,” or use one of many platforms to stay interconnected and to share work projects. Nothing wrong with that but it isn’t insulation from an ethical fall.
Decades ago, we might have called the places where these folks work as branch offices, but with the advent of the internet there is an interconnectedness upon which many organizations have come to rely. In the “olden days,” physical, face-to-face meetings were often possible. For example, the main office in New York might call in executives from Boston, Philadelphia or Buffalo for quarterly meetings.
In this new and more working remotely era, it is difficult to connect in person. The smiling faces who might interconnect with the “Main Office” in New York with far-flung offices in Singapore, Sydney, Stockholm, Sevilla and Sri Lanka along with several domestic locations can be less like the United Nations and more like a major headache.
Working in Reverse – Fertile ground for an ethical fall?
Policies and procedures developed by the main office or what used to be known as the home office, could be heavily reinforced and generally speaking, if there were ethics violations they occurred from the “inside to the outside.” What I mean by that is that ethical violations might have occurred within the purchasing office or manufacturing or shipping and receiving. Irregularities could be discovered and dealt with when they were uncovered.
What has been occurring as of late are ethics irregularities and fraud occurring from the outside-in, from the remote offices back to the main office. The smiling faces on the multi-screen platforms may not be smiling after all.
There are many recent examples of this behavior with companies getting caught in the net of the Foreign Corruption Offenses Act by offering illegal bribes, goods and services. It has occurred in the pharmaceutical industry, automotive, retail and even cosmetics industries. Reality is in a global world with different cultures and different expectations, it is easy to become ensnared in an ethical fall.
How It Happens
There are numerous scenarios but they all seem to start and stop with a lack of internal controls. All scandals begin and end with the concept of opportunity. For example, a sales rep for an American pharmaceutical company who remotely works in an office in Malaysia (or unbelievably, may work in Los Angeles for the Malaysian market), may begin to have a somewhat “improper” set of conversations with a buyer for a major hospital complex. The sales rep may indeed travel to Malaysia twice a year and there, capitalizing on an opportunity, an idea may be hatched where marketing or advertising funds are somehow diverted to cash. For a while, an unethical win/win may be created, but it creates an unfair trade advantage.
Another example might be a foreign office of a manufacturing company of American goods. It could be most anything, but let’s use luxury automobiles as an example. The foreign office, perhaps based in Moscow, has a general manager who is a bit of a “tyrant.” He directs, indeed pressures his Russian sales reps to make under the table deals. In remote conversations with the main office the general manager seems kind, happy and congenial, but he wheels and deals and forces unethical behavior.
These types of examples are not all that unusual and in fact, all too frequently occur.
Who’s Minding the Store?
In fact, many organizations have learned that unethical behaviors can flourish when control is given up for expediency. The entire idea behind a Foreign Corruption Offenses Act is to ethically level the playing field. Though remote offices and remotely based managers behaving in unethical fashion are responding to what they see as opportunity, they are committing crimes.
While I am a huge advocate of technology, I do not suggest that technology should function without more formalized and even more “primitive” forms of checks and balances. Control is essential if one is to avoid an ethical fall.
If an organization is not 100% certain of how budgets are being utilized, how staff is interacting in remote markets, how the wishes for ethical behavior are being carried out and reinforced, the atmosphere is ripe for fraud. In remote situations ethical training (though always important), must be strictly reinforced with tough internal controls. An ethical violation in a relatively small market 5,000 miles away can bring down a major company. Be careful who is minding the store and how their actions are being monitored.
Your thoughts are welcome!
