Businesspeople Across 60 Countries Issue Statement Calling for an Ethical Response to Today’s Economic Crisis at the Global Ethics Conference, United Nations, Geneva

Global Ethics Forum – United Nations, Palais des Nations, Geneva, Switzerland – July 2, 2009 – EBBF (www.ebbf.org)  the European Bahá’í Business Forum, an international NGO dedicated to inspiring responsible business practices, is an associate partnerat  the first Global Ethics Forum (www.globalethicsforum.org)

Approximately 600 global business leaders, NGOs, international institutions and experts converge at the United Nations in Geneva today to explore and discuss alternative ways to cope responsibly with the global socio-economic environment.

At the conference, EBBF released a statement entitled, An Ethical Perspective on Today’s Economic Crisis. EBBF suggests the current global financial crisis is fundamentally one of trust and integrity, and therefore ethical in its foundation, requiring an ethical response at all levels: the individual, the corporation and the government and regulatory entities.

“The European Bahá’í Business Forum recognizes in this situation an opportunity to reshape the fundamental concepts and structures that will not only lift us from this crisis but set us on a road towards a new set of institutions and behaviours which will enable humankind to prosper.” said Daniel Truran, Secretary General of EBBF.

The EBBF statement promotes and welcomes engagement with the widest possible community to develop together the new framework. Stating that given the importance of the business community in the world, we should draw on its special capabilities and resources, in collaboration with governments, international organisations and NGOs, to design the institutional framework and the guiding principles of the new economic system.

EBBF is calling on peoples from all businesses, countries, and walks of life to work together to build a new economic system based upon equity and justice.

You can read and / or download and circulate this press release and the full EBBF Board Statement, clicking here.

July 2nd, 2009 | Tags: equity, ethical business, justice, personal ethics, prosperity | Category: Inspire | Leave a comment

Here’s how Belgian member and performance consultant Koen Vanbesien responded to EBBF’s central question, How are you applying your values to your work?

The main principle for me is not to accept a mission in which I do not believe. What I mean is that often companies ask me to execute a “solution” that they themselves have created in order to solve a problem or achieve a goal. However, having over 20 years of experience in this field, very often what they propose is not going to work.

So here’s the ethical dilemma:

I know that accepting their mission “as is” would give me the business, while proposing a solution that I think will work might frighten them. So this puts me in a position to lose the business to someone who will accept the mission “as is”.

Koen says however that this doesn’t bother him. He prefers to lose that business rather than compromise his values and integrity.

I believe that my business is about bringing results; therefore I don’t want to compromise and accept a mission in which I am the only one who wins.

Koen’s bold example seems to point directly at two principles: one, that we must be coherent with what we say and believe and what we do (“Beware”, Bahá’u’lláh warns, “… lest ye walk in the ways of them whose words differ from their deeds”.), and two, that we must act in such a way that is of profit to others. W. Edwards Deming (1900 - 1993), US business advisor, agrees:

What we need to do is learn to work in the system, by which I mean that everybody, every team, every platform, every division, every component is there not for individual competitive profit or recognition, but for contribution to the system as a whole on a win-win basis.

What about you? What’s your story? How are you bringing your values to bear on your work or at your workplace? Here (or below) to share.

June 30th, 2009 | Tags: coherence word and deed, ethical business, Koen Vanbiesen, true to your values | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (1)

What does the Best Company Ever look like? This is what we’re going to be exploring at this year’s Annual Conference titled “Window of Opportunity”. Click here to view the recently produced program and testimonials from people who attended past EBBF events.

We feel that we are enjoying a “window of opportunity” offered by the current economic crisis and that we have a golden chance to make meaningful change happen, to create new meaningful ways of working and producing.

Come and listen to and interact with over 20 presenters; and share ideas and contacts with the other participants - CEOs, directors, business owners - entrepreneurs, young professionals, MBA students and executives - social innovators:like minded individuals keen to explore and share ways to inspire a new kind of successful, values-driven organization. Creating together the “best company ever”.

Almost 90 people have registered for this repeatedly sold out conference, and it’s first come-first serve, so book asap.

June 28th, 2009 | Tags: best company ever conference, EBBF annual conference, window of opportunity conference | Category: conference | Comments (1)

Click on the image to enjoy the latest edition of EBBF’s e-magazine INSPIRE
Stories, ideas, values, actions and meaningful job offers for you, from EBBF members.

June 25th, 2009 | Tags: ideas, Inspire, meaningful jobs, opportunities for action, values | Category: Inspire | Leave a comment

As we consider alternatives to the current materialistic model of development, we will need to craft new goals, policies, structures, and programs that center on the unlocking of the limitless potentialities in human consciousness, and take into due consideration the preservation of the environment. Indicators are also needed both to measure our progress along this path and to guide it. You may already be familiar with the work EBBF is doing developing values-based indicators as part of an European Comission funded project, and with a BIC statement on ‘spiritually-based indicators’. Here is another contribution to this emerging global discourse on meaningful, useful and straightforward indicators. It is taken from the website of NEF—the New Economics Foundation—which has created what they’ve called the “Happy Planet Index”, and if you go beyond the hyperbole you may find it quite insightful and surprising.

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The Happy Planet Index is an innovative new measure that shows the ecological efficiency with which human well-being is delivered. It is the first ever index to combine environmental impact with human well-being to measure the environmental efficiency with which country by country, people live long and happy lives.

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The HPI reflects the average years of happy life produced by a given society, nation or group of nations, per unit of planetary resources consumed. Put another way, it represents the efficiency with which countries convert the earth’s finite resources into well-being experienced by their citizens.

The Global HPI incorporates three separate indicators: ecological footprint, life-satisfaction and life expectancy.

On a scale of 0 to 100 for the HPI, we have set a reasonable target for nations to aspire to of 83.5. This is based on attainable levels of life expectancy and well-being and a reasonably sized ecological footprint.

At this point in time, the highest HPI is only 68.2, scored by the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu. The lowest, and perhaps less surprising More »

June 24th, 2009 | Tags: alternative indicators development, happy planet index, values-based development indicators | Category: Books and Resources | Leave a comment

From the New York Times article

OK, we all now know how important trust and integrity are to a functioning business/economic system (and social order!), but the real question is how do you build trust in a sea of corruption and dishonesty?

Well, here’s what Indonesia’s Attorney General’s office is trying: establish ‘Honesty Cafes’, little office and school snack shops operating on the honor system. Here’s a selection from a New York Times article:

During a break at a high school here one recent morning, Selica Erlindi, 15, a 10th grader who wants to be a pediatrician, picked a drink and a bag of spicy cassava chips from the local honesty cafe’s shelves. Then, in keeping with the cafe’s goal of nurturing probity among its customers and society at large, she deposited, on the honor system, the equivalent of 60 cents inside a clear plastic box.

“This motivates us to be honest,” Selica said. “Especially since there is a lot of cheating in class, at least we’re learning to be honest with money. I think it’s also important for society because corruption is a big problem in Indonesia.” More »

June 18th, 2009 | Tags: building trust, fighting corruption, honesty cafes indonesia | Category: News | Leave a comment

In this excerpt from an upcoming interview with pastor/CEO/social well-being organizer John Patterson (here for excerpts of his presentation at last year’s annual conference), we get glimpses of how to build a successful company, from scratch, starting from one’s values. (This part of John’s story takes place (mostly) in India, where he began village service work in the 70s and eventually founded Kanbay, an IT company, in 1988.)

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EBBF: How did you reconcile your values and motivations as a service-based pastor to the profit-based reality of the business world?

John: Well, having decided to devote my life to service, my question at the time was, ‘How do we get into this dirty thing called business and not get totally consumed by it?’ I knew business was not all bad, but my partners and I were moving from service work (with barely enough to eat) to being owners of a tech-based business. So we agreed that the company must be built on principles that were important to us. We had long conversations about what these were. Much of these conversations centered on the human factor, on our clients, and on the people who would be entrusting their lives to us. If we look after our people, we said, the company will grow well. We knew that when you have people from different cultures and countries, the entire business depends on people being able to respect each other. No “I’m better than you” posture. We knew that this kind of respect would flow from the culture we built into our organization.

We began by stating our beliefs, and listed the core values that sprang from those beliefs. Then we defined behavior we expected from employees (both desirable and undesirable behavior). We came up with policies, systems and processes that would reflect those values, and every year we evaluated all this with everyone in the company.

EBBF: So you made explicit your beliefs and the values that spring from those beliefs, had lists of expected behaviors, and trained your employees in these. But it’s one thing to make lists of values and behavior and quite another thing to actually translate these values into behavior. How did you do this?

John: One of our policies was that, wherever Kanbay people worked, the environment had to be absolutely world class. We weren’t going to have crappy facilities in India and fabulous ones in Chicago. When entering the Kanbay offices in India people were shocked. More »

June 15th, 2009 | Tags: John Patterson, Kanbay values, people centered business, values based IT company | Category: Inspire | Leave a comment

In this selection from the Inspire archives (here for the full interview), Dale Emerson distills the learning from the joys and pains involved in the decades long process of translating ethical and sustainable ideals into a functional and profitable business. (His company, Archibel, makes computerized diagnostic tools for alternative medicine.)

EBBF: You started working with Archibel some 17 years ago, with ideals of making a difference, of implementing the principles you believed in and had learned over the years. How has this process been?

Dale: First of all, I thought I was leaving my problems behind by creating my own business, and was finally going to be able to practice what I preached. But problems didn’t just disappear like. Maybe it was more like jumping from the frying pan into the fire!

In the beginning I thought that working hard and serving the client was all that was needed to make a business function; however, one thing I learned early on is that we are all selling something and that you have to market yourself and what you do. And so while ‘hustle’ was not my middle name, I knew it had to be done. The question was then not whether or not to do marketing, but how to do it in a way that was in keeping with my principles and not a blasphemy to the human spirit (that is, by lying or appealing to people’s baser nature).

In fact, at first I was so busy working hard, that I wasn’t really making any progress in all the important things in life, like really understanding who I was, what I really believed in, or reflecting on whether I was willing to practice what I preached, and understand my strong and weak points, or question myself and my practice. The road has been full of stones, and progress in the company hasn’t happened as fast as I once imagined. It has taken me 25 years to start to realize my weak points, remove my rose colored glasses and recognize that what you require in business, as in the rest of life, are three things:

First, that vision is not enough. More »

June 10th, 2009 | Tags: Dale Emerson, translating ideals into practice | Category: Inspire | Leave a comment

The Co-operative Bank is part of the  UK’s “the Cooperative“, a values-based family of cooperative businesses. It has an Ethical Policy that it believes sets it apart from other financial service providers. It ensures that customers’ money is used in line with their ethical concerns on issues ranging from climate change to oppressive regimes. Since 1992, the implementation of this Policy has resulted in over £900 million of finance being withheld from businesses that conflict with its principles.

Reporting into the Ethical Policy Manager, you will provide research and analysis on Ethical Policy compliance, advice to the business on ethical matters and project management on specific ethical projects arising that will enhance our performance. Strong analytical skills and attention to detail are clearly essential, as is the ability to build effective relationships with people both within and outside of the organisation. A self-starter, you will be expected to demonstrate a proven interest in ethical issues and the tenacity and strong organisational skills required to make the most of this role. Excellent project management and communication skills (including presentation skills), and the ability to write clear, concise and business-focussed reports are a must. The Co-operative Bank is part of The Co-operative Financial Services, itself a subsidiary of The Co-operative Group.

To apply, please send a CV and covering letter quoting the reference COEA4 to: Head Office Recruitment Team, The Co-operative, 2nd Floor, New Century House, Corporation Street, PO Box 53, Manchester M60 4ES.

Or alternatively via email to: jobs@co-operative.coop

Closing date: 17 June 2009.

We are passionate about equal opportunities and welcome a broad diversity of talent to apply.

Website: www.co-operative.jobs

June 8th, 2009 | Tags: cooperative bank UK, ethical jobs, ethics adviser job | Category: Job offers | Leave a comment