The Compliance Revolution: How Compliance Needs to Change to Survive

Chapter 9Corporate Faith

I was thinking about the rubbish, the flapping plastic in the branches, the shore-line of odd stuff caught along the fencing, and I half-closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field, and gradually get larger until…

—Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (London: Faber and Faber, 2005), 282

Corporate faith may seem an unusual expression but it directs us to a set of connecting forces and a repository of commitment that is fundamental. Faith here is not meant in a religious sense but rather is intended to encapsulate all that is central to corporate ethics, culture, governance, and outcomes (including community). In other words, corporate faith synthesises all that we have considered so far, operating as an overarching layer that makes sense of all that has gone before and offers an exciting approach that draws these threads together and affects them in a deeper, coordinated, and more effective way. This is the missing link and the key to success in compliance.

All the elements discussed so far—ethics, culture, governance, outcomes, and community—may seem rather disconnected. They are linked in a sequential sense where one seems naturally to lead to the need for and development of the next in a series of layers as seen in Figure 9.1. In this chapter we consider the ...