SOX Dissertation regarding IBM 1871



  • Hi All,
    I have recently completed a finance work placement year at IBM in London.
    I have signed up to a do a SOX dissertation relating to my time at IBM. My work was working within Global Business services who offered training to IBM consultants (who would in turn be running projects with outside companies)
    I have came to a point now with my dissertation that I feel its not having enough meat on the bones with my research questions.
    My main aim of my research, which i thought would be interesting to tackle, was to see how the SOX act has effected IBM employees on a day to day basis i.e hindering innovation ryc (this can be confined to Finance employees and possibly consultants running projects).
    I was wondering if any one could offer any wisdom on suggesting any better possible research questions which relate to my research theme or with my links into IBM, should I be going down a completely different path all together.
    Kind regards
    Emma



  • Hi Emma and welcome to the forums :)%0AMaybe a couple of these ideas will help:%0A1. Structured Interviews are a good way of capturing consistent data among multiple folks (e.g., this is a standard set of questions you’d ask in advance or you could also use an anonymous survey via email, if permitted).%0A2. I’d keep all individuals names confidential (even the company name, unless required)%0A3. If you can find someone who has worked long term (at least before 2004), to discuss how is was before SOX verses how SOX requirements impact them now.%0A4. Some ideas on questions to ask:%0A- Have new control procedures been instituted?%0A- Do you find SOX based controls cumbersome? (if so, what % of overhead was added)%0A- Do you have to go through extra approval steps (e.g., autonomy controls or separation of duties controls)%0A- How have documentation and sampling controls impacted your area?%0A- Have approvals and decision making been slowed in any way?



  • Wow Harry your a star.
    I have some really great contacts in IBM who have been there a while, plus I am looking to triangulate all the info i find from the interviews into a general questionairre to see if the views portrayed are reflected across a sample of finance members in IBM EMEA.
    What do you think about looking into data storage - I know this is an issue under SOX but is it that significant?
    I ask because IBM is a paperless office place in effect and alot of emphasis was put on backing up data (I know this would be done for the obvious reasons in case of a crash) but would SOX force a person say to keep copies of business cases (forecasts of project costs etc) for x ammount of years.
    Thank you all for the help…your all great
    Em



  • What do you think about looking into data storage - I know this is an issue under SOX but is it that significant?
    Hi Emma - YES, Excellent point … With firms having to retain 7 years of email history, that alone presents challenges of: storage, privacy, keeping up with email software version changes, etc.



  • I ask because IBM is a paperless office …
    Another GREAT POINT to work into the study … When I 1st started working on SOX in 2004, I had to design the controls for a company and their SOX compliancy leader (CFO), insisted on paper copies of everything (verses what I feel is a better approach of creating ‘E-Libraries’ with tight security controls and timestamping). You obviously have to do some printing in meeting SOX requirements, but if you can interview folks on that approach, it’ll be an interesting endeavor (e.g., ask about how much printing and paper storage is required with their implementation)



  • Hi to you all again.
    I am writing up my litrature review of all the major SOX issues out there, I am writing up all on section 404 at the moment.
    The major theory that i am comming up in many research is that of the SOX paradox.
    i.e where a company is to compliant with internal issues it looses its ability to be agil within the market place.
    Do any of you think that this same paradox can be linked towards employees of a company i.e if there is to much emphasis on employees conforming to SOX then there will be a loss of employee innovation etc.
    Thank you all soo much for the posts
    EMMA



  • Emma,
    The NAsdaq held a webcast seminar on Lessions learned in SOX last night.
    One of the statements made was that the opportunity Cost was affected as SOX tightened controls over innovation. They did say, however, that this is gradually becoming less of an issue as Companies begin to familiarise themselves with their requirements for SOX.



  • Emma, The NAsdaq held a webcast seminar on Lessons learned in SOX last night.
    I went to Nasdaq.com and there’s a search link at the bottom of the page, but I couldn’t quite home in on the latest webcast. Still, the search links below returned a number of links that might be beneficial for the study (e.g., companies delisting because of SOX, SOX defended by Nasdaq’s CEO, etc).
    Paste to browser - no www is needed for both links
    msxml.infospace.com/_1_2NLGTDR04RKMTPS__info.nasdaq/search/web/nasdaq.com+sarbanes-oxley
    search.nasdaq.com/search?query=nasdaq.com sarbanes-oxley-and-site=my_collection-and-client=my_collection-and-proxystylesheet=my_collection-and-output=xml_no_dtd



  • The major theory that i am comming up in many research is that of the SOX paradox. i.e where a company is to compliant with internal issues it looses its ability to be agil within the market place. %0AHi Emma - I wanted to share (at least from a large company perspective) that I don’t see SOX as a major inhibitor to a company being agile or innovative in the marketplace – unless it is a poor implementation laden with bureaucracy and needless overhead. If a company already has well established and great controls prior to SOX, it should almost ‘drop into place’, (although even there it might add 1-5% more in the way of overhead). %0AI don’t see SOX compliancy as stifling Apple, Microsoft, IBM, or other major companies from innovation, as it’s more visible in the financial, audit, and IT areas, and hopefully will be transparent to other areas.%0AHowever for smaller public companies (who might already be struggling), SOX might be more of a factor and if they don’t properly plan, design, and implement compliancy controls, documentation, and testing properly. In these specific cases, it could indeed be characteristic of the ‘paradox’. %0A Do any of you think that this same paradox can be linked towards employees of a company i.e if there is to much emphasis on employees conforming to SOX then there will be a loss of employee innovation etc. %0AYes, but only for a poor implementation of SOX as noted in my comments above. Employees might be tied up more in control, autonomy, and check-and-balance scenarios in the workflow and it could stifle innovation?


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