
SOX after Ten Years: A Multidisciplinary Review  - soundsop
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2379731
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pyalot2
SOX is an immense drag on any US business, and on any business doing business
with a US business.

I've seen this firsthand at two companies (Systor and Accenture). Adherence to
SOX creates insane bureaucracies and makes an organization utterly inflexible.
It introduces a pleathora of glass ceilings and most employees spend their
time ticking off checkboxes on compliance forms, rather than performing actual
work. On top of that, it also erodes moral/ethical behavior, because at all
levels of management, it creates the impression that as long as you're in
compliance, everything else goes.

SOX is the reason why companies like Valve will likely never go public. It's
also the reason why so many small companies who go public, fall on hard times.
A previously successful, flexible culture suddenly finds itself siloed into
the SOX (aka sucks) work structure where all flexibility and cross-
departmental/hierarchical communication ceases. Where SOX creates the perfect
breeding ground for disassociated upper management to replace the founders and
passionate people on top.

