ISO 37001
Anti-corruption: a challenge
For solving the problem of corruption and bribery, laws have no longer been sufficient for a long time. Organizations need to design their business as to prevent corruption and bribery more than ever. Management systems will help to proactively counteract corruption and bribery and handle the flood of rules and regulations, which is becoming bigger and bigger, within the company.
ISO 37001 as an international Standard for Anti-Bribery Management Systems bundles the requirements placed on organizations with laws and proven practices in order to reduce risks and costs and create transparency and clarity.
As a design option alternative to an autonomous system, the integration of the management system for combating corruption and bribery into a generic compliance management system is recommended. At this integration, ISO 19600 can be used as a guide. Besides, the anti-bribery management system (briefly referred to as ABMS) might be maintained as part of other management systems (e.g. quality, environment or information security). What is important is that numerous synergies arising from systems that already exist are utilized. As ISO 37001 is based upon the high-level structure, it has the same systematic structure as, e.g., ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015 or ISO 45001:2018. Thanks to this structure, management systems acc. to ISO 37001 can be integrated into existing systems very well. This is why value can be created rapidly.
The qualityaustria Certificate as an objective evidence of performance will create confidence among your shareholders. It will help you to demonstrate that you proactively counteract corruption and bribery and have implemented actions and controls for avoiding, disclosing and combating corruption and bribery. It also is at international RFQ’s (Requests for Quotations) that you can profit because this will help you to set a strong signal against corruption and bribery.
Note: It is often expected that ISO 37001 provides statements on the general legal compliance of an organization, but ISO 37001 only refers to an organization’s anti-bribery management system.
Quality Austria is currently in the process of accreditation, and after successful completion, will be able to offer accredited certification acc. to ISO 37001 (probably from the second half of 2020).
