Corporate compliance relies on an intricate network of individuals and organizations to monitor and report wrongdoing. Compliance improves our collective well-being by curbing corporate misconduct and by facilitating the freer flow of information.
Despite notable failures, compliance has thrived over the past three decades, becoming a well-respected element of corporate governance and the impetus for the emergence of a lucrative and thriving industry.
Now, however, compliance faces a new challenge, as polarization has become the norm in American life. Political parties have grown more ideologically homogeneous, and politicians embrace more extreme variations of the positions they supported just a few years ago. Partisan thinking has moved beyond discrete political debates, spreading to the places where people live, socialize, and work. As it has done so, it has magnified hostility and tribalism between and among groups.
Networks create value when they diffuse information promptly and efficiently. Polarization damages compliance’s relational nodes, and it undermines the critical thinking and risk-assessment skills that are so crucial to compliance’s long-term success. If the compliance network is to survive, it will need to reorganize and reframe itself for a more polarized world.
This Article problematizes polarization’s impact on compliance and its many components. It then pivots to consider compliance’s best strategies for withstanding and responding to polarization’s formidable challenges. Some of compliance’s best options are already well known; others will seem surprising. All are deserving of our consideration.
