 "Photo: Craig Bland")
Dell Computers uses strict ethical standards and whistle-blowing procedures to ensure that its employees maintain the highest standard of integrity, said Dell's president and CEO in a speech on campus Tuesday night.
Kevin Rollins, who took over as president and CEO of Dell in 2004, said the company has a set of guidelines called "The Soul of Dell" that tells employees how to act ethically. The rules seem very simplistic and easy, but they take on new meaning in light of the exposure of misconduct at Enron Corporation, he said.
Dell operates on a "one strike, and you're out" policy, Rollins said. If an employee commits one breach of ethics, he or she is fired. They are held to a higher standard than simply following the law, he said.
"If you want to operate another way, leave, because we do not want to have that at our company. We do not want to be tainted," Rollins said.
One way that employees can report misconduct within the company is through an ethics hot line, Dell Ethics Connection, which is run by a third party. Employees can file anonymous complaints, so they feel free to report bad behavior without fear of retribution, Rollins said. While the system may not find all wrongdoing, it's a start, he said.
"I would be kind of naive to think that in a company of 60,000, that there's not something wrong going on at some time," Rollins said. "We're just trying to find them."
An inherent flaw in the anonymous reporting system is that groups at Dell are often so small that it's obvious to managers who has filed a complaint, said Christopher Stanton, a systems analyst for UT's Geotechnical Engineering Center. Stanton said he was fired from Dell in 2003 after reporting unethical conduct by his managers to the hot line.
Stanton used his name when making the report because, since he was the only one who had voiced objections, he figured his manager would know who had made the complaint anyway. Stanton was told he was fired for performance reasons, but he believes it was due to friends within the company protecting one another, he said.
The ethics talk was sponsored by the Latter-day Saints Student Association in the hopes of increasing communication between the association, other religious groups on campus and the UT community as a whole, said association President Michael Perrone. Perrone was able to convince Rollins to come speak because they attend the same church, he said.
"We thought it's good to build a relationship of trust and friendship with other religious organizations and also with the UT community," said Perrone, a communication studies junior.
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