A direct reflection of the winning complaints, the apparently endless discoveries of political-corporate fraud, and the changes in some of the logics dear to companies during the troubled 2016, the discovery of new concepts related to what is called “corporate governance” will represent a wild frontier to be tamed, understood and inserted into the corporate agenda from now on. Companies that today struggle to implement compliance policies and consequent strict codes of conduct - to avoid the risk of falling into or relapsing into unethical practices - will barely have time to regain their breath and will have new demands knocking on their doors that, to some, will sound unusual.

One of the most notable among them will be the elasticity that will be discovered in the term compliance. This expression derived from the verb comply in English - to comply with an order and act according to it - is already quite broad in business jargon. It includes a vast array of phenomena from the universe of private companies, and even from public bodies, in an attempt to control them through ethical means. Corporate codes of conduct are their small apparent tips, but underneath there is an entire control machinery that has been gaining muscle of great proportions.

Still, if today we squeezed the compliance complexes of different companies as if they were different fruits, the resulting juice would have a single flavor with small variations. This flavor refers to a single phrase from corporate bibles: “you shall not steal”. The variations are as expected — “you will not give or accept bribes”, “you will not bear false witness against colleagues” and so on.

That's where we are. The next step involves adding predicates to governance. Don't be surprised to hear in the company's corridors, briefly, things like “human compliance”, “environmental compliance” or “animal”, among other increasingly detailed qualifiers — did anyone think of “childish” or “emotional”? Yes, it's in that direction.

The great candidates to gain light in 2017, however, are the first two that I will list. “Human compliance” is my biggest bet as the first to become fundamental in the life of an ethical company. It involves doing something that some of these companies already do, but in a new way, much more serious, complex and committed. It is about thoroughly managing the impacts of the company, its partners, clients and suppliers on fundamental human rights.

Speaking like this may sound ethereal as a manual of good intentions. In fact, it's something far from that. Imagine researching, evaluating, and mapping the social ramifications of a company in order to determine where, how, and why fundamental rights violations occur or may occur. This is the first step, and the difficulty is already great. The second makes the task herculean: to define how to avoid such violations and what to do if one of them is discovered.

Let's get out of the abstract for a moment to assess the challenge. I'm going to talk about a fictional character, but whose characteristics are quite possible, called Zé. Borracharia do Zé, around the corner, has two employees. One of them beats his wife day in and day out and often abuses his neighbor's daughter. Borracharia has 10 supply suppliers, including a glue firm that keeps illegal foreign employees working and living in hiding in exchange for food. One of Zé's great clients is an affable guy who tells curvy girls to take punctured tires with a knife for repair. In some ways, rubber is a central node in these human relationships. Zé is ethical but doesn't know the details of his partners. If he decides to follow a human compliance strategy, evaluating where his business interfaces with situations of violation of personal rights, he will discover that his biggest customer exploits women as a pimp, his supplier is a slaver and one of his collaborators is a sociopath.

Now, how about expanding this scenario to a company with four thousand employees, 500 suppliers, 300 resellers and another hundred diverse partners?

The problem is not only in the mapping of violations and in measures to prevent them. It also opens up to issues such as what repairs may be necessary. If the fictitious Zé is the sole or main purchaser of glue from the slave firm, he has at least ethical responsibility for what happens there. Perhaps the examples I gave seem rude or exaggerated - but, I assure you, they are not. In addition to working with compliance, I have been running an NGO for years to support people dispossessed of fundamental rights. What we see on a daily basis is a terrifying scenario of human trafficking, of enslavement in countless guises, and of violations that escape understanding. Everything invisible and, often, in some way linked to ethical businesses that are unaware of the existence of this underworld on their borders or even within them.

One of the big questions for ethical companies in 2017, therefore, is whether they want to take a step forward and embrace the issue of human compliance — daring to make the invisible visible in order to improve themselves.

*Postgraduate lawyer in Economic Law from Yale Law School, Master in International Law from Cambridge, Barry Wolfe is director of Wolfe Associates (Www.wolfe.com.br), preventive compliance consulting, risk assessment, and corporate fraud investigation.

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