Accenture ethical case

Introduction

In 2014, Fortune 500 named Accenture as one of the most ethical company globally. The In 2006, Accenture produced a substantially revised version of its business code of ethics. This essay explores some of the ethical principles, values and practices that have enabled Accenture to emerge as a global leader in business ethics. The first section gives an overview of the company while the subsequent section describes Accenture Code of Business Ethics. The third sections describe some of the ethical issues the company has faced in the past.

Company Overview

Accenture is one of the leading management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing firms. The company has over 246,000 employees, operations in 53 countries and a revenue of $ 25.5 billion (2011). The company’s high-performance business strategy is to use its expertise in consulting, technology and outsourcing to assist clients perform better to enable them create sustainable value for their customers and shareholders. Accenture uses its industry and business-process knowledge, its service offering expertise and insight into understanding emerging technologies to formulate solutions for its customers.

Accenture operates globally with a common brand and business model that enables the company to offer global clients high-level services. Its global delivery strategy enables the company to offer end-to-end delivery capability by drawing its global resources to deliver high-quality and cost-effect effective solutions to clients.

History

Accenture was established as Andersen Consulting in 1989 when a group of partners from the consulting sectors of the Arthur Anderson formed a new organization. The group of consultants formed an organization that deals in consulting and technology services to enhance business processes. Accenture formalized the business integration, processes and technologies of its strategy to enable business components. Since then, Accenture has evolved from a system integrator to a leading global management consulting and technology services firm.

Accenture experienced a decade of growth in net revenues exceeding 9.5 billion by 2000. In 2001, the company changed its name from Anderson Consulting to Accenture. The change was a result of an arbitrator’s decision that severed the contractual agreement between Anderson Consulting and Accenture. Accenture later launched one of the largest re-branding campaigns to sell the Accenture brand. In 2001, Accenture agreed to pursue an initial public offering and subsequently the company became a publicly traded firm on July 19, 2001.

Accenture Code of Ethic

The codes have four distinguishing features. These features include:

It concentrates on Accenture’s six core values

It gives practical examples for its staff of what those values means about their everyday work life.

It incorporates new legal and regulatory development.

It aims to be user-friendly.

Accenture code of ethics is founded on the foundation of its value that is stated in the action statements. The action statement describes the behaviors the company seeks to strengthen. The code of ethics include guidance from the leadership, ethical fitness decision-making model, and the five C’s. the action statement entails the standards of its business standard. Accenture’s code of ethics is built upon six core values that include stewardship, global network, respect of individual, and integrity.

The five C’s include:

Communication

Effective communication keeps all the stakeholders informed with discretion to share information . as such, the company has an open and clear financial reporting policy and an elaborate shareholders’ communication strategy. The communication mechanism also informs Accenture’s corporate citizenship programs and social responsibility programs.

Consulting

Accenture believes that information is vital for its global strategy. Its consulting strategy involves integrating employees, clients and stakeholders in the decision-making. The company promotes a learning culture in which employees can contribute to the day-to-day management of the organization. Consultation enables the human capital improves the skills, capabilities and competencies of all employees.

Cross-check

The cross-checking principle allows the company to use industry standards to compare its scorecard. Accenture uses industry’s quality indicators to evaluate its performance.

Collaborate

Accenture takes a multidisciplinary approach particularly while making all employees comfortable. Accenture provides management consulting technology and outsourcing services to local and international businesses. Its operation activities are structured around five operation areas that consists of 19 industry groups serving clients in industries globally. Its business segments include communications, media and technology, health and public services, financial services and products and resources.

Value creation

The company focuses on sustainable, long-term results and forging short-term opportunities. Honest relationships unlock long-term value. For the firm to assist clients be high-performance businesses and governments, the company needs a long-term collaborative relationship with all its stakeholders. The company strives to match its solutions with the needs of the clients by understanding the underlying interests and business objectives of the clients. It uses it unmatched experiences across various industries and business. Accenture believes that to excel, a high-performance organization’s foundation needs to be built to strong ethical standards.

Respect for the individual

The company believes in valuing diversity and the contribution of every employee. It strives to foster a trusting, open and inclusive environment that reflects the values of the company. Accenture maintains a safe and non-threatening workplace culture that does not tolerate harassment or intimidation. It condemns abuse and retaliation including abusive language and unwanted physical contact. Accenture recognizes all employee and offers open and honest performance feedback. The feedback is fair and helps employees improve their performance. It also listens to employees’ view and encourage authentic and genuine leaders at all levels. As such, the company emphasizes good communication to understand employees’ interests and opinions.

The company leadership shares a mutual commitment to support employees to achieve personal and career development. It credits employees for supporting each other. It encourages leaders to model work-life balance. Through its corporate citizenship initiative, Accenture encourages employees to volunteer, serve nonprofit organizations and pro bono projects.

Accenture leverage the power of global insights, international relationship, collaboration and learning to offer exceptional services to all clients. The company uses the highly trained and market-relevant assets to allow it outperforms its competitor. The collaboration allows the company to share knowledge and expertise to improve industry standards. Additionally, the company respects the varying cultures of different countries and works to nurture a productive relationship with global partners. They enhance the global brand by operating ethically, providing consistent value and quality.

Accenture ethics and compliance training

Accenture requires an all its employees to complete a predetermined hours of Ethic and Compliance training annually on some topics including data privacy and information security. The company also has targeted training programs on specific topics and issues for various groups such as countries that require training due to their unique local regulations. In 2012, Accenture developed a new framework to help it identify the training needs of its employees. According to the framework, senior leaders consult with the ethics group to evaluate the priority ethics issues for training. The risk assessment team evaluates the existing business priorities, internal and external changes, trends and emerging risks to advise the senior management on the most appropriate course of action.

The annual mandatory training programs track results via ethical perception surveys, use employees’ tool such as policies and COB sites and pre-and-post-test to demonstrate an increase in knowledge. The company factors ethics and compliance training into employees’ annual performance rating thus contributing to performance-based compensation.

Global risks assessment

Accenture conducts a periodic risk assessment in all its international locations to evaluate the strength of its anticorruption policies against the potential and emerging risks including new anticorruption laws, data privacy protection, and competition law. In 2012, the company began enhancing its global anticorruption efforts as part of its commitment to continue evolving and improving its strategies to fight corruption and bribery globally. Accenture operates in a wide range of industries, both regulated and unregulated. As such, ethics compliance is a vital component of its international strategy that enables it to keep in touch with the changing global trends.

Environmental sustainability

According to Accenture 2012-2013 corporate citizenship report, fostering sustainable growth for the company and stakeholders underpins Accenture’s environmental strategy. The environmental strategy comprises of four areas that include running efficient operations, working sustainably, enabling customers sustainably and providing insights to advance sustainability. The company enshrines environmental stewardship in its code of business ethics and core values. Environmental stewardship informs the company’s environmental responsibility policy. The foundation of the environmental structure is a strong governance structure.

Accenture manages and monitors its energy, waste and water initiatives across all its international and local destinations. Approximately 80% of the company’s footprint consists of carbon emissions from travel and use of electricity. In 2008, the company set an initial carbon target for every employee. The strategy has enabled the company to reduce employees’ carbon footprint by 36%. Additionally, the company reports its environmental performance to the CDP’s Climate Change Program. As a result, CDP included Accenture among the CDP Global 500 that tracks how some of the largest listed firms address climate change.

Energy management programs are central to Accenture’s environmental strategy. According to 2014 corporate citizenship report, Accenture’s energy management program has enabled the company to save approximately 370,000 megawatts of electricity and 250,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. The energy management programs include remote energy monitoring, environmental management system and ISO 14001 certification, waste and water management, and renewable resources.

The aim of the remote energy monitoring technologies is to reduce the use of office electricity. The company uses “smart meters” to conduct real-time monitoring of energy consumption enabling the company to make informed energy decisions. Accenture is committed to incorporating leading environmental management practices into its business strategy and operations and fostering environmental awareness. Additionally, through increased investment of time and resources that demonstrates the company’s continual improvement, the company has attained certification in most of its geographies.

Currently, Accenture has developed an international procurement strategy to replace non-renewable energy with renewable energy. For example, Accenture uses renewable energy in India, which is the largest Accenture’s office. The company has an elaborate e-waste management strategy. The strategy ensures proper disposal of e-waste that contain toxic elements such as lead. For example, Accenture was able to track the disposal of approximately 58,000 desktops and laptops. 99% of the tracked waste was disposed of in ways that avoid landfill. Additionally, the company implemented a global policy mandating a no landfill requirements in areas where it is possible.

Accenture has a global water management policy that aims at reducing water consumption and prevent water pollution. Although its operations are not water intensive, the company recognizes the importance of water availability. As such, Accenture works with its construction partners to promote the credible use of water.

Accenture strives to reduce carbon footprint through smart travel management that leverage technology, increase efficiency and use renewable energy. The company also has environmental programs that aim at helping clients reduce their carbon footprint. It also plays a great role in energizing, equipping and engaging employees. Accenture also has strategies to improve it supply chain regularly to reduce transportation costs.

People

Protecting the health and the safety of employees, contractors, and other stakeholders is an important aspect of Accenture’s commitment to human rights. Consequently, Accenture has global internal standards for safety and security. In the light of Accenture continued the commitment to human rights, the company has earned OHSAS 18001:2007 certifications in countries such as Spain, Brazil, and India. Additionally, the company strives to meet the expectations of its clients and aims to help employees achieve a balance between work and life. As such, Accenture has a flexible work schedule that minimizes travel and wellness seminars. In 2010, the company initiated a program to retain, grow and support women transitioning to or from maternity leave. It also strengthened its wellness offering to include benefits to address issues such as physical, financial and emotional health of employees.

Accenture has a Global Asset Protection team that provides physical security to employees globally and assisting those who need emergency assistance. The Global Asset Protection Team works with the Accenture Business Travel Services to maintain Global Watch that is an online resource that offer security risks information. Through the Accenture Inventor Award Program, Accenture can recognize employees’ innovativeness. Accenture uses the annual Global Engagement Pulse Surveys to assess how employees perceive their career experience with Accenture and invite the employee to share their inputs on how the company can improve. Additionally, the company encourages and supports an active online dialog with customers and employees. The employees interact through the Accenture People, which is an internal networking application and Knowledge Exchange that allow a collaborative environment.

An inclusive environment

Accenture employees present a tremendous variety of backgrounds, culture, beliefs, ethnicities and languages. The diverse experience enables the company to understand and be relevant to clients thus making the company more innovative and competitive. The company uses the Employee Resource Groups to foster community and offer a forum to share experiences and challenges. The groups differ according to the geographical location of the firm and offer employees the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues. The Accenture Diversity Council helps the company assess the inclusion and diversity elements of the workforce. The senior leadership promotes diversity through recruiting, retaining, and promoting employees. The inclusion and training programs enables Accenture to develop a greater sensitivity to the opportunities and challenges of working in a highly diverse globe.

Accenture has a vibrant culture that aims at recruiting, retaining and advancing women in the workplace. As of 2013, women accounted for approximately 36% of the global workforce and 40% of all new employees. Women also hold approximately 17% of Accenture senior leaders. Additionally, 27% of external members of Accenture’s Board of Directors and 17% of GMC. To support women in the workplace, Accenture strives to provide an environment and culture that empowers women. It has diverse programs that support women training, mentorship programs and networking programs.

Some of the key ethical allegation faced by Accenture

Norman Rile and Neal Rile filed a lawsuit in 2004 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas for a case of kickbacks given to IT companies and vendors to Accenture to offer them confidential information about customer for which Accenture was consultant. During the lawsuit, the whistleblowers accused the firm of receiving kickbacks from IT vendors, rigging bids and inflating prices on federal IT contracts. The alleged lawsuit centered on alleged illegal and improper payments made by Hewlett-Packard, Microsystem, and Accenture. In a public release, Accenture denied any wrongdoing and stated that the government alliance would benefit customers vendors and the entire IT industry. However, the company agreed to pay $ 63.7 million to “avoid additional time, inconvenience and expenses associated with the protracted litigation (Grant, 2011).

In 2013, Avanade, a joint venture between Microsoft and Accenture was sued by ScanSource company. Because the lawsuit was that Avanade provided AX-ERP system to complete the jobs of ScanSource, but ScanSource alleged that it Avanade was not able to meet the requirements thus leading to heavy losses. In 2012, Indian staff filed a case of sexual harassment against Accenture Gurgaon. The employee also petitioned the National Commission for Women to intervene on her behalf. Accenture responded by initiating an investigation into the case but the finding of the investigation was not reported (Yogesh, 2013). She accused her team leader of indecent body touches and sexual language in the workplace. She alleged that her employment was terminated because she raised her voice on the sexual harassment going on in the office. In 2012, August, Accenture analyst employed at Chicago office was found dead on his desk where he was unnoticed for four days. Consequently, the company was labeled as an evil empire.

Conclusion

Although Accenture has encountered several ethical issues, the company has succeeded to establish a global brand built on ethics. The company has an elaborate code of business and values that guide its global operations. The code recognizes employees as critical assets of the firm. It has an elaborate environment sustainability program and a vibrant corporate citizenship program.

References

Grant L (2011). Accenture Pays $63.7 Million to Resolve Gov't Kickbacks Case. 

Accenture: The Growth of a Global Leader. 

2012–2013 Corporate Citizenship Report. 

Code of Business Ethics: Our Core Values in Action. 

Carolyn Morgan is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in legitimate essay writing service. If you need a similar paper you can place your order from research paper services.