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Managing Sarbanes-Oxley Requirements

By Russ Selinger
August 19, 2003

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act creates a number of new requirements for publicly traded companies that are intended to improve corporate governance and avoid another WorldCom or Enron. While many organizations have focused on the immediate requirements, more needs to be done to help create a corporate culture that both promotes legal and ethical business practices and provides employees with an effective tool to report fraud or accounting irregularities.

Companies that are serious about encouraging ethical business practices will approach this issue like they have addressed the harassment issue in the past few decades. Best practice companies established clear policies for zero tolerance of any form of harassment, educated their people on how to promote a harassment-free work environment and dealt expeditiously with issues as they arose. By implementing such a comprehensive approach to harassment, companies were able to reduce the incidence of harassment in the work place and minimize their exposure to expensive litigation.

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