Accenture's Code of Business Ethics

ACCENTURE'S CODE OF BUSINESS ETHICS CASE STUDY
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Accenture's Code of Business Ethics Case Study
Introduction
The HBS case study Accenture's Code of Business Ethics focuses on a company whose leaders are trying to find a new approach in terms of the business ethics and compliance programs that would apply to its global workforce consisting of over 400,000 personnel. Accenture is a firm that deals with a wide array of solutions and services in technology, digital, operations, consulting, and strategy. The diverse nature of the activities means the company deals with different markets and customers. Accenture is a reliable company that helps customers improve their efficiency and minimize costs, and it also provides outsourcing services. The personnel work in different industries in critical business areas, including outsourcing, business strategy, supply chain management, and customer relationship management. This case focuses on the decision-making process adopted during the design process and the final decision about the updated ethics code.
Case Background
Historically, Accenture was initially a technology and business consulting branch of Arthur Andersen, and it was later renamed in 1989 to Anderson Consulting. The name was later changed to Accenture in 2001 after the firm cut all ties with Arthur Andersen. The previous owner had to give up ownership after the 2000 Enron scandal. Accenture grew tremendously to become a profitable publicly-traded company with operations in over 120 countries (Soltes, 2019). The company has an organizational culture based on legal and ethical practices based on the firm's code of ethics. The code of ethics is also derived from six core values: Best People, Stewardship and Integrity, One Global Network, Client Value Creation, and Respect for the Individual (Soltes, 2019). The code was comprehensive even though it faces criticism for being too detailed that it could be hard to determine what it contains.
Issues Discussion
Even though Accenture had adopted the evolving nature of its regulatory and business exposure, the leadership team tasked with ethics and compliance found out that the firm's code of ethics was a printed document that reflected the expectations and values of employees' conduct. Still, it did not go through updates regularly (Grojean et al. 2004). The code did not align with the policies and programs that the firm has established over the years. Several issues existed with the current code (Key, 1999). One such issue was government policy where the firm was operational in different countries with different regulations and auditing standards, yet the code of ethics did not reflect that.
Another problem was that decision-making did not apply in the previous code of conduct, so that document lacked acceptance among many personnel. It also makes it harder to implement it since very few people support the code of conduct and its requirements (Kolstad, 2007). Various programs have also emerged and evolved around the code. For instance, the chatbot's data privacy was a new development that still applied some of the principles in the previous code. The chatbox also relies on artificial intell...