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By Anna J. Park
While most corporate leaders and professionals agree that corporate integrity is becoming ever more important, they also say the pandemic has made it harder to conduct business with integrity.
According to the EY Global Integrity Report 2022, which conducted a survey on 4,762 corporate professionals from 54 countries, 97 percent of the respondents said corporate integrity is an important value in their company management. But 55 percent of the respondents believe that the standards of integrity have either stayed the same or worsened over the past 18 months.
Particularly, many board members said one of the key obstacles hindering integrity-based management is the pandemic-led corporate environment. Forty-one percent of all respondents and over half ― 54 percent ― of board members said COVID-19 has made it more difficult to conduct business with integrity.
The report said disruptions to global supply chains and increased digitalization have made corporations prioritize survival, while jettisoning non-essential activities that may include integrity agenda.
"Now they have to rethink procedures for a post-pandemic era with a distributed workforce and a pivot to full digitalization," the report reads.
The report also said effective compliance has become more difficult due to increased hybrid work, which includes more work from home. Also, a higher level of anxiety over the economic situation has stoked individual motivations for corruption.
Yet a silver lining exists, in that more companies are now increasing investments in integrity education. Forty-six percent of the respondents said that their companies are investing in education on the importance of corporate integrity, which is up 8 percentage points compared to two years ago, when only 38 percent of respondents said so.
The report went on to stress that creating a culture of integrity is not a quick fix, urging organizations to invest more in communication and training programs.
