Business Case Studies,Corporate Governance & Business Ethics Case Study, Flour Corp's Business Ethics Practices: Creating Six Sigma Standards in Staying Corruption-Free

 

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Fluor Corporation: Corruption Floored? Cont...

'The Code' describes the necessity of maintaining morality in almost all areas of its business and gives strict guidelines to the employees and any (even the slightest) violation of 'The Code' is not viewed gently. After guiding the employees, 'The Code' aptly states "Remember: Looking the other way is not accepted"²³ .

While leaving no stone unturned to make all its business practices corrupt-free, Fluor Corp. is also working with external agencies to propagate and sensitise other players in the industry, the absence of which would make its internal efforts futile. After all, unless and until other players in the industry also endorse the corruption-free business practices, it would become highly difficult for Fluor Corp. to continue to pursue its corruption-free business practices. Fluor Corp. takes the lead in acting against corruption by associating with many anti-corruption organisations and bringing in standards of conduct in the way business is done. Fighting corruption not only provides personal satisfaction but helps to improve business too, opines Boeckmann and he observed that, "many of our clients choose us over others, because they know we're on the up and up and will give them a clean environment that will not cause them any embarrassment."24 Global Fight Against Corruption: Setting Ethical Standards Powerful firms and conglomerates, have a very important role and responsibility in

combating corruption and joining hands with international bodies like TI and World Economic Forum (WEF), which, over the years have taken several proactive and aggressive steps to usher in corrupt-free business world. At the 2003 meeting of WEF, Boeckmann was asked to head the engineering and construction industry in a fight against corruption and global bribery. The members of the task force were also asked to establish a set of benchmark 'Business Principles'. Working with TI and Basel Institute of Corporate Governance, the group of engineering companies from Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North and South America developed a set of much needed anti-corruption principles.

As a part of WEF's annual meeting on January 25th 2004, 19 leading international engineering and construction companies including Fluor Corp., signed and adopted a set of business principles for countering bribery, in a move to combat global corruption within their industry. The companies thus committed to a 'zero tolerance' policy on bribery and development and implementation of a broadbased, anti-corruption programme to guide the behaviour of employees. With these principles, WEF began Partnership Against Corruption Initiative (PACI).

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23]"Fluor code of business conduct and ethics", http://www.fluor.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/HR700.pdf
24]Ibid.