CORPORATE ETHICS of Activision Blizzard : Activision Blizzard, Inc., formerly Activision, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATVI) is the American holding company for Activision and Blizzard Entertainment. The company is majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA and was created through the merger of Activision and Vivendi Games, announced on December 2, 2007,[3] in a deal worth USD$18.8 billion.[4] The deal closed July 9, 2008. The company believed that the merging of the two companies would create "the world’s largest and most profitable pure-play video game publisher".[5] It believes that it is the only publisher that has "leading market positions across all categories" of the video game industry.[5]
Corporate Ethics International is well known in the North American NGO corporate campaign community. We are the organization that major foundations have asked to launch campaigns to change the practices of core industries and our staff have the intensive experience of being at the center of campaigns against corporations such as Mitsubishi, The Home Depot, Staples, Walmart, and most recently BP, Shell, and Exxon.
CEI founded the Business Ethics Network; a network that is now comprised of more than 150 corporate campaign organizations who lead in the corporate responsibility movement. Nike, Dell, Microsoft, Lowe’s, Victoria Secrets, and many other corporations have been transformed by the members of this network. BEN is the professional association where organizations can share experiences, find collaborative partners, sharpen campaign skills, discuss emerging issues, and celebrate their victories with the Benny Awards.
The very least we can do is to be honest about what we do each day. There is so much poverty, so much hunger across the world. Greed for revenue and profits can only transform our world into an animal kingdom.
It matters little what you do as long as you live your life with pride. It is fine to earn more as long as it is done honestly and not at the cost of others.
I am not being naïve to say the world can be completely honest. All I am saying is the more of us have to find our true passion and work for that passion honestly. And in doing so, help our people find pride in their work and the thrill attached to that rather than in hanging an 'available for rent' board around our necks.
The recent terror attacks in Mumbai offered a window of opportunity for people from all religions and sects of Indian society to come together and strengthen the war against terrorism. The Satyam disclosure has had a similar effect on the corporate world in India.
It is resulting in a search for the 'ethical quotient' among leaders. Going beyond the intelligence quotient and the emotional quotient, it is seeking answers to important questions such as: How much is too much? How big do you want to be? How far are you willing to go to get there? Is being big more important than being trusted?
It is a leader's approach to these questions that determines the destiny of a company.
Unlike popular perception, corporate governance is not merely ensuring adherence to a set of rules. It is also not about smart brand-building exercises to manage "perceptions." It is less about policing and posturing and more about nurturing trust as an intrinsic part of an organizational culture.
Trust is the only currency that can sustain a corporation through the turbulences over its lifecycle. And, in my experience, one of the most uncomplicated ways of seeding trust is through transparency. This fabric of trust can be woven with simple but very effective tools like direct and open employee-CEO/manager dialogues, either in-person or through interactive platforms like blogs, employee polls with results available to all, and access sans gate keepers.
The other pillar on which trust can be built is a culture of accountability of management to its employees, and not the other way around. We need to simply invert the traditional prism of how businesses should be run. We all know that accountability of leadership is non-negotiable to all stakeholders -- customers, investors, shareholders, regulators. But the one stakeholder that is often missing in accountability is the most important - our own people. We owe it to the thousands and millions of hard-working people who have scripted our success. Who have trusted us and woken up every morning with a passion for their work.
We need to win back their trust. A cat may have nine lives to live, yet leaders have only one. If we destroy our reputation in search of profits, we destroy our pride and ourselves.
Recent history has shown that European-based corporations seem to be ahead of their U.S. counterparts on implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability practices but are they really doing a better job of avoiding unethical conduct on a large scale?
A closer look reveals that in this era of globalization the present day business operations in the United States and Europe are not as different as many assume. Both have to deal with the clouded definition of what it means for a company to be ethical and responsible.
The research was undertaken to test the proposition that the ethics, governance and CSR practices of corporations based in the United States differ dramatically from corporations based in Europe. The analysis is meant to provide companies with a better understanding of the similarities and differences between the U.S. and European business environments. The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics wants to inform partnering companies of the current business climate in Europe by taking a closer look at government regulation, company policies, best practices and opinion surveys.
In an effort to determine how ethics and CSR practices of European-based companies compare to U.S.-based companies, eight European companies and ten American companies were researched. These companies were compared across the technology, energy, healthcare, and aerospace and defense industries. The results of the sample showed that European companies show more of a commitment to CSR than U.S. companies. However, American companies are more devoted to having structured business ethics and governance programs in place. The Enron scandal and Sarbanes-Oxley legislation have caused American business ethics and governance to surge in recent years.
To measure similarities and differences I consulted experts in the industry, reviewed literature and opinion surveys, and used the following objective indicators to measure the sample companies:
• Has the company publicized a Code of Conduct/Ethics?
• Are the company’s conflict of interest guidelines publicly available to investors?
• Does the company make it clear who the designated Ethics/Compliance Officer is?
• Does the company have a whistle blowing process implemented and is it easily accessible?
• Does the company publish a CSR or sustainability report?
• Is CSR one of the company’s core corporate principles or business objectives?
European companies scored high on the CSR indicators. Fifty percent of the European companies analyzed had CSR embedded in their corporate strategy while only twenty percent of U.S. companies did. In addition, all of the European companies in the sample publish reports on how the company is responding to stakeholders’ social and environmental concerns. Only half of the American companies sampled committed resources to publishing a CSR/sustainability report. The results are consistent with the literature which shows that since the mid-1990s, European governments and consumers have played a much more active role in promoting formal CSR practices.
Corporate Ethics International is well known in the North American NGO corporate campaign community. We are the organization that major foundations have asked to launch campaigns to change the practices of core industries and our staff have the intensive experience of being at the center of campaigns against corporations such as Mitsubishi, The Home Depot, Staples, Walmart, and most recently BP, Shell, and Exxon.
CEI founded the Business Ethics Network; a network that is now comprised of more than 150 corporate campaign organizations who lead in the corporate responsibility movement. Nike, Dell, Microsoft, Lowe’s, Victoria Secrets, and many other corporations have been transformed by the members of this network. BEN is the professional association where organizations can share experiences, find collaborative partners, sharpen campaign skills, discuss emerging issues, and celebrate their victories with the Benny Awards.
The very least we can do is to be honest about what we do each day. There is so much poverty, so much hunger across the world. Greed for revenue and profits can only transform our world into an animal kingdom.
It matters little what you do as long as you live your life with pride. It is fine to earn more as long as it is done honestly and not at the cost of others.
I am not being naïve to say the world can be completely honest. All I am saying is the more of us have to find our true passion and work for that passion honestly. And in doing so, help our people find pride in their work and the thrill attached to that rather than in hanging an 'available for rent' board around our necks.
The recent terror attacks in Mumbai offered a window of opportunity for people from all religions and sects of Indian society to come together and strengthen the war against terrorism. The Satyam disclosure has had a similar effect on the corporate world in India.
It is resulting in a search for the 'ethical quotient' among leaders. Going beyond the intelligence quotient and the emotional quotient, it is seeking answers to important questions such as: How much is too much? How big do you want to be? How far are you willing to go to get there? Is being big more important than being trusted?
It is a leader's approach to these questions that determines the destiny of a company.
Unlike popular perception, corporate governance is not merely ensuring adherence to a set of rules. It is also not about smart brand-building exercises to manage "perceptions." It is less about policing and posturing and more about nurturing trust as an intrinsic part of an organizational culture.
Trust is the only currency that can sustain a corporation through the turbulences over its lifecycle. And, in my experience, one of the most uncomplicated ways of seeding trust is through transparency. This fabric of trust can be woven with simple but very effective tools like direct and open employee-CEO/manager dialogues, either in-person or through interactive platforms like blogs, employee polls with results available to all, and access sans gate keepers.
The other pillar on which trust can be built is a culture of accountability of management to its employees, and not the other way around. We need to simply invert the traditional prism of how businesses should be run. We all know that accountability of leadership is non-negotiable to all stakeholders -- customers, investors, shareholders, regulators. But the one stakeholder that is often missing in accountability is the most important - our own people. We owe it to the thousands and millions of hard-working people who have scripted our success. Who have trusted us and woken up every morning with a passion for their work.
We need to win back their trust. A cat may have nine lives to live, yet leaders have only one. If we destroy our reputation in search of profits, we destroy our pride and ourselves.
Recent history has shown that European-based corporations seem to be ahead of their U.S. counterparts on implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability practices but are they really doing a better job of avoiding unethical conduct on a large scale?
A closer look reveals that in this era of globalization the present day business operations in the United States and Europe are not as different as many assume. Both have to deal with the clouded definition of what it means for a company to be ethical and responsible.
The research was undertaken to test the proposition that the ethics, governance and CSR practices of corporations based in the United States differ dramatically from corporations based in Europe. The analysis is meant to provide companies with a better understanding of the similarities and differences between the U.S. and European business environments. The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics wants to inform partnering companies of the current business climate in Europe by taking a closer look at government regulation, company policies, best practices and opinion surveys.
In an effort to determine how ethics and CSR practices of European-based companies compare to U.S.-based companies, eight European companies and ten American companies were researched. These companies were compared across the technology, energy, healthcare, and aerospace and defense industries. The results of the sample showed that European companies show more of a commitment to CSR than U.S. companies. However, American companies are more devoted to having structured business ethics and governance programs in place. The Enron scandal and Sarbanes-Oxley legislation have caused American business ethics and governance to surge in recent years.
To measure similarities and differences I consulted experts in the industry, reviewed literature and opinion surveys, and used the following objective indicators to measure the sample companies:
• Has the company publicized a Code of Conduct/Ethics?
• Are the company’s conflict of interest guidelines publicly available to investors?
• Does the company make it clear who the designated Ethics/Compliance Officer is?
• Does the company have a whistle blowing process implemented and is it easily accessible?
• Does the company publish a CSR or sustainability report?
• Is CSR one of the company’s core corporate principles or business objectives?
European companies scored high on the CSR indicators. Fifty percent of the European companies analyzed had CSR embedded in their corporate strategy while only twenty percent of U.S. companies did. In addition, all of the European companies in the sample publish reports on how the company is responding to stakeholders’ social and environmental concerns. Only half of the American companies sampled committed resources to publishing a CSR/sustainability report. The results are consistent with the literature which shows that since the mid-1990s, European governments and consumers have played a much more active role in promoting formal CSR practices.
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