"What's
especially valuable about this summit is its commitment to developing workable solutions:
outcomes that can be implemented once this summit is over." - Dr.
Chitra Reddin, Vice-President, Public Affairs, CICA |
|
Introduction
By all accounts, the second annual business
ethics summit Reality Check: Business Ethics in the Real World was an
unqualified success.
All participants enthusiastically embraced the
practical, real-world orientation of the two-day event.
The theme and purpose of Reality Check flowed
naturally from the first business ethics summit in the Fall of 1999. Participants at that
summit established key themes aimed at the
advancement of business ethics.
Four working groups took up the challenge of addressing these separate yet interdependent
themes:
Business Case: if businesses exist to be
profitable, what benefit does ethics offer to business leaders? Is ethical behaviour
profitable?
Measuring business practices: if we are to
treat business ethics as a practical business issue, can we develop a credible way of
measuring the level of corporate social behaviour?
Education and training: if business ethics
isn't as strong as it should be, where are the weaknesses? Who should be responsible for
delivering the improvements? And how should it be done?
Developing a common language: if the words
we use in discussing business ethics don't have universally understood meanings, it
weakens the entire effort. What is the solution?
Reality Check was by no means
the culmination of their work. The goal of Reality Check was precisely to
put their work through a reality check so that effective, practical business ethics
products could be developed and marketed.
A true reality check on business ethics can only
happen with the involvement of the people who are impacted by the work of these groups:
business leaders. That is why, in planning Reality Check, the summit's
organizers aimed for a balance of senior business people, ethics experts and academics.
Others participants, like Steven Young, called Reality
Check "leading stuff". Young is the global executive director of The
Caux Round Table, an impressive group of senior business leaders from North America,
Europe and Japan committed to promoting principled business leadership.
Just as importantly, Reality Check could not
have happened without the generous support of its sponsors, represented at the summit by
Bob Lord, Chair, Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants, Don Lenz, Director, The
Laidlaw Foundation, Scott Wood, Director, Nike Canada Ltd., and Louise Cannon, Vice
President, Compliance of Scotiabank.
A special note of appreciation goes out to Roger
Parkinson, Chair of The Globe and Mail, who was a skillful and enthusiastic
facilitator for Reality Check.
With the success of this summit, there now
exists an unprecedented opportunity to create real changes in the commitment of business
to ethical and socially responsible practices. |
