Understand 3 Pillars of ISO 37001:2016 Anti-Bribery Management Systems

ISO 37001 is an Anti-bribery Management System that assists organizations in preventing, detecting, and avoiding bribery by adhering to anti-bribery legislation. Implementing, maintaining, and upgrading an Anti-bribery Management System program at a company will assist it in condemning bribery, avoiding reputational damage, and gaining trust and confidence. Integrating ISO 37001 with any other management system will be easier if the firm has followed certain processes and met ISO standards requirements. The processes that are important when implementing a management system are goal setting, policy creation, training and awareness sessions, communication of ISO-compliant policies, information documentation, non-conformity control, the creation of corrective and preventive actions, internal audits, commitment to continuous improvement, and management review.

We must take into account ISO 37001 standard requirements and update what has previously been implemented to integrate ISO 37001 with an organization's current management system. The organization must incorporate anti-bribery goals and policies, train staff, and convey anti-bribery rules and other updates to the previous management system procedures while upgrading the current processes. The organization is required to adhere to ISO 37001 and other ISO standards.

The organization must do the following to achieve this: document information for integrating these management systems; conduct internal audits; monitor integrated management system non-conformities; develop corrective and preventive actions to conform to non-conformities, and commit to continuous improvement of integrated management systems. Let's also discuss the standard's breadth and a somewhat contentious subject. The three pillars that support effective anti-bribery management systems are listed below.

Prevention: Because ISO 37001 is a propositional standard, it has criteria designed to attack and combat bribery. As a result, it appears logical that one of the standard's pillars is to prevent, that is, to try to prevent bribery from occurring.

Detection: We'll get to it later, but a standard (no matter how solid and resilient it is) is no guarantee that bribery will not occur. Furthermore, there may be instances where the norm is implemented following the occurrence of corruption and bribery charges. As a result, the standard must include standards that aid in the detection, i.e. discovery, of potential bribery events.

Response: It is pointless to detect bribery if the organization does not take meaningful action against it. As a result, one of the pillars of ISO 37001:2016 is to assist businesses in developing responses and action plans for potential situations of bribery. When combined with the previous pillars, the Response contributes to the development of a comprehensive anti-bribery system.

One common query from professionals who are just getting started with ISO 37001 standard is whether it just aims to tackle bribery. To answer this question, Really would like to point to an excerpt from the standard's Scope. So, to answer the question, the standard was intended to combat bribery. However, it is up to the organization to determine what the largest threat is that it faces, or what risks it wishes to manage. It can then handle issues like:

Fraud

Money laundering

Other activities related to corrupt practices.

Because it is impossible to entirely remove the risk of bribery, compliance with the ISO 37001 Documents can also assure that no bribery has occurred or will occur regarding the organization. The ISO 37001 document, on the other hand, can assist the organization in implementing reasonable and proportionate actions aimed to prevent, detect, and respond to bribery. As a result, defining the scope is essential while developing and implementing an ISO 37001:2016 Management System. The management system's scope determines its bounds and application. This, in turn, will affect the organization's context, stakeholders, and, of course, risk assessment.

Source: https://documentationconsultancy.wordpress.com/2022/12/10/understand-3-pillars-of-iso-370012016-anti-bribery-management-systems/

As ISO Consultant profession since last many years Charles has rich experience in preparing such certification documents within ISO guideline to his global clients to acquire better ISO Certification Solution to their Organization.