Business Services Industry

Alliance to create Center for Corporate Ethics

Information Outlook, Oct, 2004

The Rand Corp. and LRN have established a strategic alliance to create the LRN-Rand Center for Corporate Ethics, Law and Governance to study ways businesses can best conduct operations ethically, legally and profitably at the same time.

The plans for the new center are in large part a response to ethics scandals that have rocked corporate American in recent years. The center will be part of the Rand Institute for Civil Justice.

Los Angeles-based LRN is a provider of legal, compliance, ethics management and corporate governance services.

"Rand and LRN were inspired to launch the initiative by the crisis in trust of corporate America and the subsequent regulatory response. These events have created the need for new research into how businesses should conduct themselves in a new environment," a press release said

The organizations want the center will become the central national repository for objective, data-driven analysis of the interaction between organizational behavior, corporate culture, ethics and law. Research efforts will include topics such as: corporate governance; ethics and legal compliance; legislative business reforms including Sarbanes-Oxley; and government regulation including actions by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

People from the business, legal and research communities are being recruited to serve on a board of advisors of the new research center.

For more information see www.rand.org/icj.>