CEBC Mid-Year Report, 2001-2002 

We wish the best to the members and friends of the Center for Ethical Business Cultures (CEBC) and trust that your 2002 is off to a great start.

As we reach the mid point in our fiscal year we thought it timely to share progress made to date and plans for the remainder of the year. No doubt 2001 was one of the most difficult years for us as individuals, our families, our economy, our country and the resulting impact on our businesses. Coupled with the challenges facing Enron, business finds itself in the position of having to reach for higher standards in demonstrating its integrity.

Business leaders, in particular, are in the middle of turbulent times unlike any others that have existed before. Leadership takes on a whole new meaning…one without past experiences or models to extrapolate to serve as a lamp to light the way. More is being demanded by all stakeholders, including employees, customers, suppliers, communities and the shareholder. Part of the solution lies in ethical behavior towards these multiple stakeholders.

At CEBC our mission is assisting business leaders in building ethical and profitable business cultures. We focus in three areas:

• Promoting awareness about the importance of building ethical culture through research, publications and public speaking

• Developing services that help organizations as they strive to build ethical cultures

• Helping to educate the next generation of leaders on the importance of building ethical cultures

Read on to hear about some of the exciting progress we are making toward this mission, and the plans we have.

Thank you for your help and interest in helping us as we build toward this mission. I hope you share in the excitement we feel about the timing and the importance of our work and the progress we are making.

I’d love to hear from you!

Ron James
President and CEO

Through its research, publications and public presentations, CEBC builds awareness of the critical importance of business ethics and corporate citizenship.

• Mergers and Giving: CEBC completed a research study on Mergers: Implications for Corporate Philanthropy and the Community. The report and report summary were published in January 2002. "Mergers and Community: Does 1+1=2?," a Star Tribune Business Forum article based on the report, was published on 7 January 2002.

• Ethical Value Project: Under the direction of Executive Business Fellow James A. Mitchell , Phase One of the Ethical Value Project on how ethical cultures add value to business has been completed. Mitchell presented a summary of this research at a public forum The Ethical Advantage in November 2001. Phase Two focuses on creating a tool box of resources to help companies build and maintain ethical cultures.

• Retention Research: CEBC sponsored research by UST College of Business Professor Teresa Rothausen, Ph.D., with four CEBC member companies: Why Good Employees Leave: A Study of Employee Retention (to be released in March 2002).

• Business Giving: CEBC chairs the Research Committee for Building Business Investment in Community, a major statewide study of business giving and community involvement in Minnesota.

• Ethics Scan: CEBC is assisting UST Professor Sally Powers, Ph.D., in scanning emerging ethical themes in the workplace identified by St. Thomas MBA students.

• Building Relationships: CEBC has developed working relationships with the European Business Ethics Network (EBEN), the Caux Round Table (CRT), Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), and the Canadian Centre for Ethics and Corporate Policy. Additionally, it has connected its work through the Human Resource Executive Council (senior Minnesota HR executives) and the Senior Community Affairs Professionals (corporate giving executives).

CEBC represents its member companies at regional, national and international conferences, both listening and speaking on behalf of its business members. Recent conferences include the Caux Round Table (CRT) Global Dialogue 2001 (London); Canadian Business Ethics Summit (Toronto); 14th Annual European Business Ethics Network (EBEN) Conference (Valencia, Spain); Ethics Officer Association (EOA) 9th Annual Conference (Nashville); and Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) 9th Annual Conference (Seattle). Listed below are some of the themes:

• Global Haves & Have Nots/Gap Between the Rich & Poor. The role of business in addressing the gap between the rich and the poor was a theme at both the CRT and BSR conferences. BSR observers argued that poverty (which is aggravated by rapid population growth in poor nations) is the greatest source of instability. The CRT Global Dialogue 2001 looked at the economic development role business plays by its investments which lead to better paid employment, infrastructure improvement and wealth creation. Most international business investment happens in the wealthiest industrialized nations. As globalization continues, business will be asked to play a larger role in helping underdeveloped countries through infrastructure development, philanthropy, and leadership engagement. There will be challenges addressing issues of bribery, corruption and poor governance. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are pressing the role of business in addressing social responsibility. The Canadian Business Ethics Summit expanded on this theme to look at the roles of business in relationship to sustainability, one generation preserving and developing its resources so that future generations can expect equal, if not better, resources in the future. Business is a consumer of resources and shares in the responsibility of preparing for the next generation.

• Global Reporting Initiative/Triple Bottom Line Reporting/Business Conduct Management Standard. According to reports from the EOA and BSR conferences, businesses and business organizations around the world are responding to pressure from NGOs and from social investor groups to develop comprehensive ways of reporting their performance that go beyond "the financials." These include triple bottom line reporting (adding social and environmental to financial performance), the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) which is working to develop common standards for social and environmental reporting and the EOA’s exploration of the feasibility of developing a business conduct management system standard through the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) process which would be mutually compatible with the ISO 9000 standards for quality and the ISO 4000 environmental standards.

• Practitioner Networks. EBEN launched an Ethics Practitioner Forum, a network to identify and share best practices and resouce information concerning business ethics, to link together the small groups of ethics practitioners who are meeting independently across Europe. Members of other networks (including CEBC’s Business Ethics Network^SM) are welcome to participate. For further information, contact Chris Moon at cmoon@cawdles.demon.co.uk 

CEBC develops and provides services in business ethics, corporate citizenship and work/life issues for its member companies.

• Leadership Institute in Corporate Counseling^SM CEBC is offering the second annual series of programs for corporate counsel on the legal and ethical dimensions of significant cases. This series, co-sponsored by the Minnesota Chapter of the American Corporate Counsel Association (ACCA), the University of St. Thomas School of Law and the William Mitchell College of Law, brings together corporate counsel, trial lawyers, judges, business executives and business ethicists. It pays particular attention to the need corporations and their in-house counsel have to balance the interests of various stakeholders – customers, employees, investors, regulators, the community, etc.

• Federal Sentencing Guidelines Conference: CEBC is partnering with the United States Sentencing Commission, headed by UST Trustee Judge Diana Murphy, and the Ethics Officers Association to host Shaping Tomorrow’s Debate: Ethics, Compliance and the Organizational Sentencing Guidelines, a national forum on the evolution of the guidelines and implementation best practices. Ron James, CEBC’s President & CEO, has been invited to serve on the national committee which is proposing revisions for the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.

• Minnesota Business Ethics Award^TM and Educational Forum: CEBC and the Minnesota Chapters of the Society of Financial Service Professionals (SFSP) have organized the 3rd annual awards and half-day educational forum. The Educational Forum focuses on equipping small and mid-sized businesses with the tools needed for building and maintaining ethical culture.

• Consulting Services: CEBC assisted an international organization in developing its ethics and business conduct compliance program and is assisting a local organization in developing a new ethical value system. It has been approached by several other organizations to provide assistance.

• Business Networks: CEBC facilitates two on-going business networks – the Center’s Business Ethics Network^SM and the Center’s The Work«Life Network^SM.

• Ethics Training: A CD-Rom with 25 ethics training scenarios will be released March 2002. Fourteen additional training modules on a range of ethics and compliance topics are under development.

Working with its two university partners, the University of St. Thomas College of Business and the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management, CEBC helps to develop succeeding generations of business leaders.

• Study Abroad: The Center developed Ethics, Culture and Business: A European Perspective in a Global Economy, UST’s first graduate Study Abroad in Business Ethics to be offered this summer.

• Ethics Decision Simulation: CEBC staff have led its proprietary Pogo: An Ethics Simulation for high school students from the Minnesota Business Academy charter school business ethics classes, for Bethany Lutheran College undergraduate business students and for graduate students in the Carlson School MBA orientation. Pogo has also been used in UST’s Executive MBA program. It is available for use within business settings.

• Educational Forums: The Center staff presented on panels related to Leadership and Corporate Responsibility (College of St. Catherine), Managing in Turbulent Times and the Ethical Leadership Series (Carlson School) and co-hosted a roundtable with UST Distinguished Visiting Scholar U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce William Lash.

• Ethics Conference: Professor Norman Bowie, holder of the Andersen Chair in Corporate Responsibility at the University of Minnesota and CEBC’s Academic Director for the Carlson School, has secured funding for a series of conferences on corporate responsibility. The first, to be held in 2003, will focus on Moral Imagination and Its Impact on Business Decision Making.

CEBC is building its organizational capacity so that it can better serve its member companies and fulfill its mission.

• Pledges of $500,000 have been paid from two major donors.

• $131,825 in membership revenue has been committed to date with a goal of $300,000 for the fiscal year.

• Alternative sources of funding are being explored and developed including research grants ($3500 was received from The Minneapolis Foundation to help fund the Mergers study and report); consulting services and special events.

• CEBC’s web site – www.cebcglobal.org – continues to be developed and enhanced. New pages have been added with others being developed. All program brochures and other publications are now available on the web. 

Center for Ethical Business Cultures

1000 LaSalle Avenue, TMH 331 ▪ Minneapolis, MN 55403-2005 ▪ USA

Phone: 651 962 4120 or 800 328 6819 Ext. 2-4120 ▪ Facsimile: 651 962 4042

Email: mail@cebcglobal.org

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