Complying with the law and doing the ’right thing’ is essential for companies for legal and ethical reasons - regardless of the economic benefit. The numerous scandals of recent years show that this is not always easy for companies. Legal and ethical requirements are often put on the back burner if it supposedly serves the economic success of the company. Compliance officers are therefore faced with the challenge of having to justify their work.
’It is difficult for compliance officers to demonstrate the contribution of their work to the company’s success and to prove the effectiveness and efficiency of compliance measures,’ says Christian Hauser, co-project manager and at the UAS Graubünden. Up to now, compliance has mainly been seen as a cost driver. The value contribution of the sometimes high investments remained largely unclear. The risks and costs avoided through compliance are difficult to quantify, as they are mostly of a preventative nature. ’It was therefore all the more important to determine this value contribution. This is where our research project comes in. We were able to prove the compliance business case for the first time,’ says Mirjam Gruber-Durrer, co-project manager at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.
Compliance as a success factor
The researchers identified eleven factors that positively influence the effectiveness and efficiency of compliance - albeit to varying degrees. Three of these factors proved to be particularly relevant: Compliance competence, decision-making relevance and adaptability. Compliance competence refers to the ability of employees to recognize potential legal and ethical risks, respond appropriately and take suitable measures. Decision relevance means that compliance is firmly embedded in the company’s strategic and operational decision-making processes. And adaptability describes the ability of compliance to react dynamically to changes in the business environment.’Our results also show that effective and efficient compliance explains up to 18 percent of the variance in company success, which is a considerable value,’ says Christian Hauser. The research project was thus able to prove that compliance makes a significant contribution to corporate success. The results of the project, which was funded by the Swiss Agency for Innovation Promotion - Innosuisse, have now been summarized in the book ’Return on Compliance - Success Factors of Compliance and its Contribution to Corporate Value’, which has been published by Springer Gabler.
