About Us

Ethics

Ethics

Fair and transparent
corporate culture

Fair and transparent
corporate culture

We build integrity into the fabric of our daily operations to fulfill
our social role and responsibility in a way that befits our status as
a top-notch global company.

We build integrity into the fabric of our daily operations to fulfill our social role and responsibility in a way that befits our status as a top-notch global company.

As our business spans across numerous countries around the globe, we recognise and analyse differences in laws, regulations, and practices in respective countries while conducting business in lawful and ethical manner. We also develop and implement global personal data security policies to respect the privacy of our customers and employees and to protect their personal data. Our endeavors to systematically manage compliance and ethical risks are driven by the Samsung Global Code of Conduct and the Business Conduct Guidelines that guide all our employees in taking action and making value judgment. Our Compliance Team, previously under the Legal Office, now reports directly to the CEO and the head of Compliance Team attends all board meetings to support important decisions made by the board. We operate dedicated organizations at each business division and overseas regional offices to manage compliance issues pertaining to each business and region.

Ethics management

We disclose our Global Code of Conduct (‘Samsung Business Principles’) to our suppliers, customers, and other external stakeholders as well as to our employees through our ethics management website, and provide a channel to report on any violation of ethical standards. Furthermore, the ‘Employee Business Conduct Guidelines’ that serve as the ethical standards for our employees are translated and available in a total of 15 languages (including Korean) and uploaded on our in-house intranet. Relevant details are disseminated and shared among all our employees around the globe through collective, online, and audio/visual training offered at least annually if not more. Separate ‘Business Guidelines’ are also provided to our suppliers in order to establish transparent business practices.

Ethics & compliance management

Compliance management

Our compliance program aims to establish a compliance-driven corporate culture in order to minimise the business risks that may occur due to price-fixing or the infringement on intellectual property rights and to take a stronger responsibility in the areas of human rights, health & safety, and environment. The Compliance Program Management System (CPMS), an IT system developed to manage compliance-related risks, provides our area-specific policies and the details of regional issue monitoring. Our Help Desk is up and running to assist employees in making one-on-one inquiries to experts whenever they have work-related questions or when they find our guidelines insufficient to determine illegality. Our whistle-blowing system, developed under the CPMS for our employees, is operated in a way that firmly guarantees the confidentiality of whistle-blowers.

Compliance
management
process

  • Prevention

    Offer employee training, provide area-specific guides, make system-based self-reviews, operate the Help Desk, monitor and manage new and revised regulations

  • Monitoring

    Conduct regular/ad-hoc monitoring through dedicated units or staff

Privacy policy

We officially announced our global standard privacy policy and developed relevant policies that reflect region-specific regulatory conditions and local characteristics. As a result of such endeavors, our employees are provided with the ‘Global Personal Information Guide’ and ‘Management Guide for Outsourcing personal data processing’ to be used as management regulations. We operate our processes and systems in a way that incorporates relevant policies into our daily business conduct and continue to perform reviews and offer company-wide training.

 

Operation of dedicated units

Create the Global Privacy Office within the Corporate Legal Office under the direct
leadership of the CEO
Appoint lawyers in charge of privacy policy in respective business divisions
 

Strengthened review of privacy policy operation/management systems

Perform regular reviews and make necessary improvements on our systems and services operating for our customers and employees for their managerial, technical, and physical protection system that governs the entire process of data collection, processing, and disposal
 

Privacy policy training

Provide on/offline privacy policy training that takes into account department-specific job characteristics (planning, R&D, marketing, etc.) as well as basic training that targets all employees
 

Privacy Legal Management System (PLMS) operation

Make it mandatory to take preventive measures through the use of the data privacy risk checklist developed to review data privacy risks at each stage of the products and services, from planning and development to operation and termination while reviewing such checklist through dedicated lawyers