Leaders at the University of St. Thomas College of Business and the Center for Ethical Business Cultures have had little time for vacations since they entered a permanent joint venture July 1.

“We have had a series of conversations with several faculty members who are engaged in ethics at the University of St. Thomas to explore our points of intersection,” said Ron James, CEBC president and CEO.

“We clearly see the linkages between our missions at the college and the center. The college of business is focused on educating highly principled global business leaders, and our center focuses on assisting business leaders in building ethical and profitable business cultures,” he explained.

“The neat thing about those missions is you can tell they are in alignment. But we tend to focus on today’s business leaders and helping them in their work environments, while the university focuses on tomorrow’s business leaders and preparing them to take on broader roles into the future.”

James said the joint venture offers a wonderful opportunity to create linkages between today and tomorrow by using practical academic theory to help today’s business leaders, and to take real -world business experiences into the classroom to help tomorrow’s business leaders.

“Those are a few things we’ve got on the drawing board,” he said. “It’s definitely a win-win situation.”

The joint venture also enhances the center’s ability to influence and impact the current generation of business leaders to help support the creation of environments of integrity, he said.

And, he added, “We’re having a chance to increase the level of influence both today as well as tomorrow, and that’s got tremendous power.”

St. Thomas will help the center build an endowment to ensure its long-term stability and expand research through faculty partnerships. The center, the nation’s longest-running, business-led organization focusing on corporate responsibility and business ethics, will continue to work with other academic institutions including the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. However, it will be affiliated solely with the St. Thomas College of Business. CEBC continues as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit guided by a board of directors elected by its business members.

According to James, “CEBC’s purpose has never been more relevant and needed than in these times, when restoring trust and confidence in the integrity of business is so critical. [The center celebrated 25 years of service to the business community in May.] This relationship brings added stability and academic resources to the center as it prepares to deliver increased services in the coming years.”

CEBC plans to expand its public programs, like last year’s White-Collar Crime Symposium, a collaborative effort with the St. Thomas School of Law and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. It was recognized by Twin Cities Business Monthly as the best business program of the year.

The center has participated in several national efforts aimed at encouraging ethical behavior in business, including President Bush’s Forum on Corporate Responsibility and an advisory group to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

That involvement has led to increasing requests for the center’s services. CEBC staffers have been invited to speak in more than 60 local, regional and national settings over the past year.

The center’s growing list of services includes Ethical Leadership Training Development Services; the CEBC Integrity Survey, designed to help organizations gauge their ethical environment; and Advisory Services designed to assist boards and executives.

“The center has become a leading authority in diagnosing healthy organizational cultures, and the college of business has emerged as one of only a few schools in the nation to devote significant resources to business ethics research, curriculum and outreach,” said Christopher Puto, dean of the St. Thomas College of Business.

“By creating a permanent home for the center at St. Thomas, we’re better linking scholarly examinations of business ethics to the concrete dilemmas encountered in workplaces across the country,” Puto said.

CEBC was established as the Minnesota Project on Corporate Responsibility in March 1978 by leading Minnesota CEOs such as Kenneth Dayton (Dayton-Hudson), Judson Bemis (Bemis Corp.), Anthony Andersen (H.B. Fuller) and David Koch (Graco).

The center’s name was changed to the Minnesota Center for Corporate Responsibility when it incorporated in 1982. In 1988, it began partnering with the University of St. Thomas.

In 1998, the organization added an affiliation with the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. That year the center also adopted its current name.

The center is best known for developing the Minnesota Principles, which have evolved into a set of global business principles known as the Caux Round Table Principles for Business.

CEBC moved, in October, to Terrance Murphy Hall on the UST Minneapolis campus, but has been housed in college of business facilities for about 15 years.