Holding ourselves to high ethical standards

Why is it important?
Building trust with customers, patients, associates and society is the foundation of our long-term success. Our stakeholders not only expect us to do what is legally required, but also to act with high ethical standards wherever we operate and to be accountable for the way our business impacts people and the environment. We recognize these expectations of our company and strive to do what’s right both for Novartis and for society at large.
Our targets
Conduct risk assessments for all new eligible suppliers
Complete risk assessments of existing suppliers by 2022
Fully integrate human rights into third-party risk assessments in scope
Enhance external reporting on anti-bribery by 2022
Post all clinical trial results on clinicaltrials.gov or novartisclinicaltrials.com within one year of completion
Our approach and performance
We work to build trust – with associates and partners, doctors and patients, and with society more broadly – by embedding environmental, social and governance (ESG) topics into the core of our business. We are governed by strong and consistent values and continue to implement policies and practices to hold our company, our associates, our suppliers, and stakeholders we work and interact with to high ethical standards. We endeavor to identify potential problems, prevent issues from occurring, promote personal accountability, and generate lessons that we can apply across the company.
This continues to be a journey, and we are making progress. We are embedding principle-based decision-making in our business interactions to help ensure our leaders and associates act appropriately when faced with ethical dilemmas. We are expanding our efforts to protect human rights within our operations and throughout our supply chain. This extends from creating a more inclusive company culture to protecting people and communities with uncompromising standards for ethical sourcing and practices. As a diverse company operating globally, we know this is a challenging endeavor and there will always be more we can do.
In this section
Read about our journey to strengthen ethics, risk, compliance and assurance at Novartis: