Did you know that diversity may help your company avoid regulatory infringements?
This is what we understood from reading the OECD Gender Inclusive Competition Toolkit (the toolkit), which I highly recommend. In 2017, some competition fora started discussing gender issues, which was a trending topic at the time. Many competition experts had difficulties finding a link and building bridges between the two policy objectives. How could competition policy possibly help gender inclusiveness? Or the other way around? What is the intersection between gender and competition? At that time, there was little to no literature or research available on the subject-matter and the OECD and its Competition Committee pioneered an initiative to explore the relation between the two.
According to the toolkit the social context and the dynamics of the group are key elements to understand how cartels emerge and remain over time. It also concludes that similarities in the characteristics of members may facilitate the creation of cartels. The toolkit stresses that white-collar crime is not a feminine or a masculine thing, men and women may be equally prompt to get involved in economic crime. What matters is the homogeneity of the group. This leads us to the conclusion that industries and companies that promote gender equality and other factors of diversity (such as ethnic origin or age) may be less likely to get involve in cartel activity (and other types of white-collar crimes).1
Diversity would, thus, boost companies’ compliance efforts in preventing risks such as competition violations and other economic crimes. This reinforcing effect speaks in favour of a holistic (rather than silos-based) approach to companies’ compliance systems.
Companies tend to build compliance and integrity systems in boxes; adopting policies and investing resources in individual risks (such as corruption, competition, money laundry, human rights, diversity, etc.) depending on gravity. Few companies zoom out and observe the interactions, the reinforcing and sometimes also divergent effects of those compliance and integrity objectives. At Comp2law, we favour a 360° approach to compliance design and implementation to meet our client’s expectations.
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1 See also Abate and Brunelle, Cartel behaviour and boys’ club dynamics: French cartel practice through a gender lens. https://www.oecd.org/daf/competition/gender-inclusive-competition-proj-3-cartel-behaviour-and-boys-club-dynamics.pdf
