Newsletters

“Each person must take his own life seriously: he must accept that it is a matter of importance that his life be a successful performance rather than a wasted opportunity. I'm talking about dignity. It's a term overused by politicians, but any moral theory worth its salt needs to proceed from it,” Professor Ronald Dworkin was quoted as saying in an interview about his book  'Justice for Hedghogs' at the end of March this year. In the same interview Professor Dworkin went on to say, "We have a responsibility to live well. Our challenge is to act as if we respect ourselves. Enjoying ourselves is not enough… The first challenge is to live well – that is ethics – and then to see how that connects with what we owe other people – which is morality. The connection is twofold. One is respect for the importance of other people's lives. And the other is equal concern for their lives."

 

We could say that the one big thing for Globethics.net is to promote the value of values. At the Globel Ethics Forum that we are organizing at the end of June here in Geneva the focus is on the value of values in business and on practical solutions in a global context.

 

Specialists from around the world including the keynote speaker Michel Doucin, Ambassador for Corporate Social Responsibility at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs are coming to share their knowledge and experiences at the Global Ethics Forum. We trust that Ambassador Doucin along with the other experts taking part will help Forum participants examine the myriad expressions of values in business, identify the challenges and guide them towards ways in which business can be done well in a process that extends over the three years of the Global Ethics Forum project (2011-2013).

 

 

Specialist speakers from all continents at the Global Ethics Forum 2011

Preparations are well in hand for the Global Ethics Forum 2011 taking place in Geneva, Switzerland from Thursday 30 June to Friday 1 July 2011.

Specialists from around the world are coming to share their insights on the different aspects of applied business ethics with each other at the Forum. The full list of speakers with short biographical notes and photographs can be found here. They include:

• Michel Doucin, Ambassador responsible for Corporate Social Responsibility in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, France
• Franck Eba, Group SIFCA, Ivory Coast
• David Gerber, State Secretariat for International Financial Affairs, Switzerland
• Betina Sarue, ETHOS Institute of Business and Social Responsibility, Brazil
• Jean-Pierre Méan, President of Transparency International Switzerland
• Deon Rossouw, CEO of Ethics SA, South Africa
• Pavel Shashkin, General Secretary, Expert Council on Ethics and Economy under the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia
• S.D. Shibulal, Co-founder and CEO, Infosys, India
• Markus Schulz, Chief Compliance Officer Global Group, Zurich Insurance, Switzerland
• Alejo Sison, Professor, President, European Business Ethics Network EBEN, Spain
• Jacques Spelkens, Head of the Department of Social Innovation, GDF Suez, France
• Vasanthi Srinivasan, Director of the Institute of Corporate Governance, IIM-B, India

The Global Ethics Forum is being supported by 28 associated partners respresenting a broad range of institutions and networks including business ethics networks, academics, CSR specialists, governmental and non-governmental organizations. The full list is available here and includes the:

• Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS)
• Latin American Business Ethics Network (ALENE)
• Business Ethics Network of Africa (BEN-Africa)
• Centre for Corporate Governance and Citizenship of the indian Institute for Management (IIM-B)
• Centre for International Business Ethics (CIBE), China
• Ethics and Compliance Officer Association (ECOA)
• Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative
• Transparency international

You can register here to take part in the Global Ethics Forum 2011. Note that you save EUR 50 or more off the registration rates when they register before 10 June. 

The theme of the Forum is The Value of Values in Business: Global Perspectives, Practical Solutions with a programme that features over 50 moderators and panelists in three sets of four parallel workshops and two plenaries over the two days. The workshops will provide opportunities to explore case studies, standards and meet key actors from around the world.

The 2011 Geneva conference is part of the Global Ethics Forum 2011-2013 project that includes events, research, exchange and documentation across numerous sectors, public, non-governmental, academic as well as the private sector. 

More information about the Global Ethics Forum can be found here.

Globethics.net Board welcomed in Costa Rica

The Globethics.net Board of Foundation was invited by Clotilde Fonseca, Board Member from Costa Rica to hold its first meeting of the year at the offices of the Omar Dengo Foundation in San José on 30 April and 1 May 2011.

A new Board Member, Guido Sacco was elected at the meeting. Also on the agenda was approval of the Annual Report 2010 and accounts 2010, updates on developments in the library, regional programmes and the Global Ethics Forum. The next meeting of the Board will take place in Geneva in October 2011.

As mentioned in the editorial of the Newsletter No 3/2011, the Board meeting was followed by a conference on the theme of "Enhancing life: The Ethics of Science and Technology". It was organized at the Omar Dengo Foundation offices with Globethics.net and the Costa Rica Academy of Science and Technology and others. It was an initiative of Clotilde Fonseca, Globethics.net Board Member and, until March 2011 Minister of Science and Technology of the Government of Costa Rica. 

The Globethics.net Libraries

New open access journals available in the library

Thanks to the work of our submitter Lijo John and our reviewer Janakiraman Amirthalingam, bloth living and working in India, Globethics.net is proud to offer you access to seven new open access journals with all the available back issues.

• The Journal of Academic and Business Ethics
• The Journal of International Business and Cultural Studies
• The Indian Journal of Medical Ethics
• Solidarity: The Journal of Catholic Social Thought and Secular Ethics
• Contretemps: An Online Journal of Philosophy
• Parrhesia: A journal of Critical Philosophy
• Postcolonial Text

To access the articles, please follow the links above and then click on 'Journal Articles'.

Lijo and Janakiraman also regularly work on updating the library by integrating manually the latest issues of the forty open access journals that are available in the Globethics.net library.

Integrating this data manually is a big effort and we would like to take this opportunity to warmly thank Lijo and Janakiraman for their work. It enables Globethics.net to give you access to these journals in your library and to give a larger outreach to these important journals.

Please be aware that “open access” does not mean “copyright free”: as a Globethics.net participant you may read and download these articles for free for your personal use only (no other use is authorized without a written permission from the journal’s publisher unless the journal is published under a Creative Commons or another open licence). You will always find this information in the bibliographical information of the articles and in the journal description in the Globethics.net list of journals.

Transparency International collection available in the library

Globethics.net is happy to announce that a new institutional collection is available on the Globethics.net website. The electronic publications of Transparency international are available in a special collection here.

"Transparency International, the global civil society organisation leading the fight against corruption, brings people together in a powerful worldwide coalition to end the devastating impact of corruption on men, women and children around the world. TI's mission is to create change towards a world free of corruption."

The collection, which goes back over 12 years includes the annual Global Corruption Report as well as reports on specific topics such as the recovery of stolen assets, timber trafficking and whistleblowing.

The Globethics.net Network

Over 25'000 registered participants!

The Globethics.net Network is growing faster and faster. It's the end of May and we have 25'000 registered participant. This means 10'000 more than at the end of December 2010! In five months we count as many new participants as we had for the whole of 2010. We extend a warm welcome to the new participants and we hope that all of you who have registered enjoy the services of  Globethics.net and find useful resources for your work or studies!

We are also active in different social networks and invite you to visit our pages: Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, and Koprol.News from the Regional Programmes

Workshop launches search for network partners in São Paolo

Globethics.net Director and Founder, Christoph Stueckelberger co-moderated a workshop with Professor Maria Cecilia Coutinho de Arruda on 5 May in São Paolo to launch the search for partners to establish a Globethics,net regional programme in South America. The workshop took place at the business school of the Getulio Vargas Foundation, FGV-EAESP and was attended by around 30 participants from Brazil and the region. They were introduced to the work of the Globethics.net and they were asked to give their inputs on possible partners in the region. More news about developments in the region will be given in future newsletters.

News in brief from Indonesia, India and East Africa

Globethics.net Indonesia is preparing a collection on Islamic Ethics for the online library with the help of a new research assistant Ferry Siregar.

Globethics.net India is preparing a collection on Business Ethics for the online library with the help of Prabeetha Bolar. Globethics.net India is also co-organizing a national consultation from 14 to 16 June 2011 in Bangalore together with the National Council of Churches of India and other partners. The theme is 'Towards a New Ecclesia - A Common Search'.  

Globethics.net East Africa is in the process of selecting a part-time Programme Executive after opening up the position in May.