Accountability
An organization displays accountability when it actively seeks to meet the legitimate expectations of its stakeholders.

Anonymity
Anonymity refers to a way in which someone can raise a concern or issue without having their identity revealed to anyone.

Board of Directors
A formal body of persons who represent the interests of the company’s shareholders and are charged with making decisions regarding the general policies, programs and initiatives.

Bribery
Bribery is the direct or indirect offering of illegal compensation to a government employee.

Business ethics
Business ethics describes the body of management systems and tools to surface the company values, guide employee actions to these values and prevent and detect misconduct.

Code of ethics
A code of ethics is a formal written document that outlines the acceptable and unacceptable behavior of company employees and agents.

Confidentiality
Confidentiality is a promise given to someone not to reveal their identity, particularly to those could retaliate against them. Ethics officers often promise confidentiality to those who would like to report misconduct, but would not if others knew who had reported it.

Conflict of interest
A conflict of interest occurs when a person’s private interests (usually financial) conflict with their professional duties.

Corporate governance
Corporate governance refers to the body of systems and practices by which corporations are structured and governed.

Corporate social responsibility
Corporate social responsibility described the body of management systems and tools that help companies minimize their environmental impact, adhere to international labor standards, contribute to their communities and manage toward a more economically sustainable world.

Corruption
Corruption occurs when a person chooses to enrich him or herself at the expense of the general society by misusing his or her official position.

Disclosure
Disclosure refers to the formal system via which an organization allows its employees to report their private interests that may conflict with their professional duties. Disclosure usually refers to financial interests, but it need not be limited in this way.

Eco-efficiency
Eco-efficiency describes the direct financial gains experienced from adopting an environmental strategy. At its heart, environmentalism is about wise use of resources, and many companies that incorporate environmentalism into their business strategy experience financial benefits derived from lower resource consumption and waste disposal costs.

Environmentalism
Environmentalism refers to the conscious examination of one’s impacts on the natural world.

Ethics committee
An ethics committee is a group of senior-level managers within a company that convene to implement an effective ethics program within their organization.

Ethics office
An ethics office is a formal part of an organization whose sole responsibility is to implement the company’s ethics program. Typically, ethics offices handle issues of misconduct, employee communications on the company’s standards and aligning management systems with corporate responsibility goals.

Ethics program
A formal organizational initiative to implement standards of responsible business conduct, and detect and prevent misconduct.

Institutional integrity
Institutional integrity refers to the structures and systems an organization adopts that lead to acceptable outcomes from a corporate governance, business ethics and corporate social responsibility perspective. It is performance-driven in the sense that a firms institutional integrity is measured by results of its actions, and not its adopted systems.

Minority shareholder rights
Minority shareholder rights refers to the ways in which a company adopts (or refrains from adopting) mechanisms to give their non-controlling shareholders a voice in the company’s oversight.

Ombudsman
A person in a company who is completely independent from a company’s management and provides a safe alternative to employees who seek advice or report misconduct. An ombudsman in general does not conduct investigations or advocate for the company or the individuals. The ombudsman usually only reports misconduct for investigation if he or she has obtained the express consent of the reporting individual.

Rule of law
Rule of law refers to the predictable and firm implementation of national laws. Rule of law requires a commitment to serving citizens, transparency and accountability.

Stakeholder
A stakeholder is any person who impacts, is impacted by or in a position to influence, an organization. Typical stakeholders include customers, consumers, employees, local communities, shareholders, competitors, future generations, academics, members of the media and government officials.

Sustainability
Sustainability refers to conducting business in such a way that enables it to continue to be successful far into the future. Sustainability has an economic, environmental, governance, legal and social component.

Transparency
Transparency refers to conducting organizational operations in a manner that is honest and clear, particularly to outsiders and auditors.

Triple bottom line
The triple bottom line is a term coined by the English management expert John Elkington. It described a system of corporate accounting that includes social and environmental impacts along with the financial accounting.

Value engineering
Value engineering refers to wise and appropriate use of organizational resources.