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Caux 2003 |
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Globalization
. . . as if people really mattered Conference Summary The
Junior Round Table (JRT) summer meeting in 2003 was the tenth consecutive annual meeting,
while the Caux Conference for Business and Industry (CCBI), the backdrop
for the JRT meetings, was celebrating its
thirtieth anniversary. Therefore, the JRT meetings in Caux looked back
on the history of the JRT and also looked forward to the years to come
– without passing up traditions: a hike and the JRT fondue. We talked
about the next interim meeting, which will hopefully take place in the
Ukraine (in March / April of 2004), future annual meetings in Caux and
the role of local chapters. Inspired
by a plenary discussion on integrity, we also discussed JRT members
own experiences with ethical behaviour in the workplace. Many of us seem
to encounter difficulties in doing ‘clean business’, without
bribery, false bills, etc. This creates dilemmas with regard to
our own role in a company: what can you do to combat unethical behaviour,
what are the risks (such as losing your job), how to find a clean job in
a clean company and so forth. While JRT members can’t solve
these problems directly, it is important that the round table provides a
platform to discuss experiences with unethical behaviour and how to
respond to it. In
a public workshop, Martin Jansen and Steven Greisdorf talked about
their experiences with the JRT. Martin is one of the founders and spoke
about the development of the JRT over the years, how it provides a space
for discussion about your own experiences, how its mission statement
came about and how it is personally enriching and fun to build a global
network. Steven told how he had become involved in the JRT through the
2000 interim meeting in Washington DC. This meeting bred so much
enthusiasm that he went to Caux and subsequently decided to become one
of the directors of Caux Initiatives for Business, the host for the CCBI. From that perspective, Steven considered the JRT
an invaluable source of new ideas and a true asset for CCBI/CIB. The
discussion that followed, inspired us to come up with many ideas for
future JRT activities. In
the context of “future activities of the JRT” we decided to set up a
virtual community in the very near future. Discussions on the internet
will connect JRT members all over the world throughout the year and make
the JRT more accessible for those who are unable to attend the meetings.
We plan to have an internet discussion every two to three months,
starting in September/October with the topic ‘inspiring ethical
behaviour’ (moderated by Gilette Conner, Kristiane Weber, and Fabiola Benavente). The second topic will be ‘EU
accession’ (including the effects on countries that are not part of
the enlarged EU) in November/ December (moderated by Martin and Terezia
Jansen and Philippe Mourges). In
a brainstorm session, we identified a large number of other possible
topics and we named moderators who will take the issues up during the
year to come (others, who were not in Caux, should not hesitate to join
in of course):
To
start a discussion the people in charge can write a short description of
the topic, table some issues for discussion, use a case study, interview
a resource person / guest, use a summary of a book or an article on the
issue (or tell us where to look on the internet for more information).
In one of the plenary sessions of the CCBI, Mr. Nadkarni of the Tata
Council for community Initiatives in India presented the policies of
corporate citizenship of his company. This highly inspiring case would
be excellent as a starting point for one of our discussions. We
also discussed other ways to deepen our knowledge about ethical
behaviour in the workplace, such as field trips to companies (during the
interim meeting and/or the Caux meeting); this might be a good way to
see if a company is really committed to ethical behaviour (walk the
talk). In addition, we came up with the idea to organise workshops in
future summer conferences, for instance in conflict management, to learn
how to deal with unethical behaviour in our own workplace. It
was also agreed that:
To
some people, it was not entirely clear what JRT does and who can be
members. Therefore, it might also be helpful to:
We
look forward to your participation in the virtual discussions. If you
have any comments on this report, new ideas or other issues relevant for
the JRT members, please don’t hesitate to send an email to hein.bogaard@tiscali.nl |