Role of Ethics and Compliance

¶ … role of ethics and compliance in your selected organization's financial environment.

Ethics and Compliance at the Microsoft Corporation

The players in the modern day business community are not only focused on operating in accordance to the legal aspects, but also to the norms of ethical behavior. Microsoft itself subscribes to this belief, as many of their actions and rulings show. The company cherishes ethical behavior and strives to implement its norms and principles at all levels of business operations. In terms of the materials they use in the creation of their products and services, the organization recognizes the individual property and copy rights of each application and vows to respect the rights of each of these software applications. More specifically, they promise to:

never engage in or tolerate unauthorized copy, distribution or use of computer software instruct all employees, clients and other users of software applications on the proper usage of the programs enforce policies, controls and penalties to reduce the change of unauthorized use of software take full responsibility in case an organizational staff member uses software in an unauthorized manner within the company or for company related purposes (Website of the Microsoft Corporation)

Another aspect of ethical behavior is implemented in relation to gifts. The internal rules are regulations are tailored in a means that they comply with the regulations of the United States Government relative to the treatment of gifts. In this order of ideas, the internal regulations state the following:

the Microsoft company or any of its employees will not offer gifts to governmental staff members, nor will they offer them corporate products for prices under the market price the company will offer meals at the public events it organizes, but will do so without the meal being considered gift to the public officials the company often offers gifts of value to the attendees at a public event they organize; they do not however offer the gifts to governmental employees; each attendee is as such required to state whether he is or not a governmental employee (Website of the Microsoft Corporation)

The software monolith is also in compliance with the legal and ethical stipulations in terms of its financial operations. The 2009 Annual Report for instance argues that the company was "in compliance with the only financial covenant in both credit agreements, which requires us to maintain a coverage ratio of at least three times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization to interest expense. No amounts were drawn against these credit facilities during the year ended June 30, 2009."