Organizational philosophies and technology integration

Organizational Philosophies and Technology

The intent of this paper is to evaluate how companies are using technologies to define, set, manage and enforce ethical standards throughout their organizations. The use of technologies for ensuring compliance to ethical standards can also have a significant effect on the culture a company promotes, which is covered in this paper as well. The selective use of technologies can also have a significant affect on how organizations perform their human resource functions as well, a topic also discussed in this paper.

Using Technologies to Ensure Compliance to Ethical Guidelines

With the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) the requirement of organizations publicly-traded on American stock exchanges to adhere to the Acts' requirements for compliance and financial reporting significantly re-aligned internal information systems. In many organizations the it systems had to be completely redesigned to provide for more efficient reporting and analysis of financial results to be in compliance to the requirements of SOX. The factor that above all else drives a high level of urgency within organizations to align their it systems with the need for compliance is the audit process completed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of all publicly-traded organizations.

Inherent in Sarbanes-Oxley compliance efforts is the synchronizing of the many databases and data marts that contain financial data in addition to managing content of all forms more transparently than has been the case in the past. The growth of analytics, database integration technologies and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) has been in direct response to the need for greater coordination of financial data and the re-defining of processes to make Sarbanes-Oxley compliance easier accomplished including successful completion of audits by Sarbanes-Oxley auditors.

Columbus and Murphy (2002) defined through their series of research initiatives on the adoption of enterprise content management (ECM) as a unifying strategy across all content stores had a 5% penetration rate into many organizations. The more fragmented content sources are in an organization the greater the need for peer-to-peer storage architectures. Columbus and Murphy found that business strategies are driving the need for peer-to-peer integration points across homegrown, legacy, third party, best-of-breed, and ERP systems' databases. Accountants and financial professionals in companies who are working to achieve Sarbanes-Oxley compliance are responsible for making their systems, processes, and reports ready for auditors to approve. These SOX Audits are what the Securities and Exchange Commission looks at in addition to a company's own auditor's review to ensure all financial statements and the processes used to produce them are consistent and clear in their results. Often SOX Auditors are finding that the underlying processes, not the reports or financial analysis, are what need fine-tuning.

The lessons learned from going through a SOX audit, pointing out key reasons why companies fail their security and compliance audits, are next described. Most significant is the change required within an organizations' culture when an entirely new set of compliance requirements are introduced. Change management forces many organizations to completely re-align processes to ensure their broader compliance strategies are adopted and successful (Regan, O'Connor 2002). Changing processes requires that the employees most affected by the change buy into the new approaches to getting work done, and in fact become owners of the next process.

How Compliance-based Technologies and Processes Change Cultures

The development of change management strategies must taken into account not only the process-based changes inherent in enabling an organization to be more in compliance to regulatory requirements, there must also be ownership of the new processes and systems at the associate or employee level fostered continually (Sirkin, Keenan, Jackson 2005). Change is fraught with the perception of risk on the part of many employees, and therefore the support for change must come from the senior management of an organization in order to be seen as credible. Compliance-based strategies within an organization, supported through systems efforts, must also strive during implementation and roll-out to be as transparent and truthful as possible regarding the impact on associates. As any change is seen as potentially untrustworthy, it is critical for companies integrating new processes and systems to support them to concentrate on establishing and sustaining trust throughout the process. A company's culture then significantly changes as there are more changes in processes, systems, and roles in order to bring an organization in alignment with compliance requirements. The culture can either be enriched and made more transparent, or become more closed and more lacking in trust; it is all up to how senior management positions the changes occurring.

How Technologies Used in Human Resources Affect Company Culture