A Corporate Code of Ethics?

Ethically Challenged asks: "Under the guise of recent legislation everyone at the publicly traded software company I work for is being asked to sign a 'Code of Business Conduct and Ethics'. In part, we have to swear to the following: we should not use company resources for any non-business purposes (I probably can't even write this); we must disclose to the CFO any relative that works for a customer, competitor or vendor; and, we are required to narc on coworkers who we suspect violate the code in any way. Are developers at other companies being asked to do this? Does it bother anyone that lowly workers like me are being asked to sign these things because executives are too immoral to behave themselves? Isn't all of this a colossal waste of time since most of it is common sense and it's pretty clear that the bad guys will ignore it anyway?" Most of this stuff sounds like the boilerplate protections most companies put in their employee agreements in the first place. Since you generally have to sign such agreements before you get your first paycheck, this new initiative seems rather redundant to me. Can someone more clued-in explain the justification behind this one?

Comments

Tightening the rules

[BornInASmallTown]

Sometimes you see companies doing this in order to make the rules more strict or to communicate to the employees that you are about to enforce them.

For example, we once had to sign a similar agreement about patents we held or had been granted at a previous job--even though we had already signed something similar when we came to work in the first place. (We were not granted any stock options unless we signed the new agreement.) The idea was that my current company wanted to ensure that their list was valid so that they would be justified in defending their own patents, or going after any that employees were granted during employment there.

It's just a lot easier to enforce an existing rule after you remind everyone that the rule is in place. That's why you hear around the holidays that the highway patrol will be cracking down on [insert your favorite violation, most often seat belt wearing where I'm from]. The law is already in place, and it is probably *possible* to enforce, but it is *easier* to enforce and subsequently prosecute if no one has an excuse of being ignorant of the law.

Problem is liability.

[Unknown Poltroon]

Would anyone EVER start any kind of busisness, if when it failed, or had an accident, they could be sued barefoot and out of thier own house? With corporations, there is less personal risk involved. If they did away with corporations, something else identical with a different name would pop up, or the entire worlds economy would die in about a day.