Companies Tout Their Ethics Compliance in Enron's Wake

Companies Tout Their Ethics Compliance in Enron's Wake - But Only in English

"Nothing focuses the mind like the knowledge you will be hanged in a fortnight," said Columbia University business law professor John Coffee.

He's talking about the way corporations are rushing to tout their ethics codes on their websites in the face of the Enron convictions. Unfortunately, they seem to be doing it in English only. Clearly, American companies still have a ways to go toward true globalization.

In addition to its Code of Ethics and its corporate governance guidelines, worldwide oil and gas, chemical, petrochemical, and process industries giant Dresser-Rand, has an Ethics Hotline on its site that:

"permits confidential, anonymous submissions of concerns regarding alleged violations of the Company's Code of Conduct, including concerns with respect to questionable accounting or auditing matters."

Plus, there is a separate website for anonymous reporting of ethics transgressions in several languages, plus phone numbers to call in each country.

While Sarbanes-Oxley requires corporate codes of ethics and other compliance materials to be translated into the languages of the countries where a company does business, as well as into the languages of all of its employees, the entire site is in English.

Fluor Corporation's Code of Ethics lists exceptions as "None." Fluor is one of the world's largest, publicly owned engineering, procurement, construction, and maintenance services companies. Fluor's site also is entirely in English.