Companies

Although I regularly work for governments, most of my work is focused on companies. I often do this for or with lawyers, especially when it comes to incidents, but the consultancy work and training are always directly commissioned by companies.

For example, the consultancy work may be focused on improving the resilience of companies against integrity breaches. By improving job satisfaction, employees will show themselves to be more loyal to the company, recognise and report abuses sooner and are less likely to be guilty of them themselves. Such projects start with the management of the company, including the members of the Supervisory Board, with a detailed analysis of the method of management in relation to elements that influence the (desirable) actions of the employees.

In addition to improving overall resilience to integrity breaches, internationally operating companies experience trade challenges in which doing business fairly can prove challenging. International anti-bribery regulations require many Dutch organisations to change their way of doing business and their mentality. By making a good analysis of how the company now operates in relation to the legal requirements, an improvement plan can be drawn up. But that change will prove difficult if the employees do not come to different insights themselves. That is why such assignments are accompanied by training based on practical case studies to stimulate these insights.

Since 1995 I have been involved in all possible aspects of integrity improvement, from the development of codes of conduct, making risk factors measurable (yes, there is a test) to setting up operational audits aimed at managing integrity risk. In that context, I even appeared before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into the Construction Industry, as an expert in integrity and government. I am not an ethicist or behavioural scientist, but a specialist in applied ethics, as a professor of business ethics once pointed out.