BGRC 2007
It was really great to be at BGRC 2007 at CEIBS, Shanghai. It was a series of many firsts for me. It was for the first time that I visited China, attended a CSR conference or met fellow MBA students from so many different Asian BSchools.
It was a pleasure hearing Chandran Nair from Global Institute for Tomorrow. He argued that the current approaches towards social responsibility may be too little too late. He is in favor of stringent laws to be enforced to protect environment. It was also a pleasure meeting Fred Dubee from UNDP. He is Senior Advisor at UN Global Compact , an initiative of ex-Secretary General Kofi Annan. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has accelerated this initiative of his predecessor.It is quite enlightening to see how a purely voluntary initiative can make its presence felt in the corporate world. It was also really interesting attending workshops of Prof. Henry Paul de Bettignies from CEIBS and Prof. Andrew Crane from Schulich. Both of them know how to engage their audience and have a meaningful discussion on a difficult subject like Business Ethics. Andrew is also the author of the book 'Business Ethics'. He recognizes that the book might need to modifications for Asian readers. This leads me to think about the existence of 'universal ethics'. Do we all really share some common values cutting across the religions, countries, races and sexes? If we do, why can't the corporate world adopt a Universal corporate ethic charter in their code of business conduct? But someone needs to come up with the charter first. Does Global Compact have a role to play here?
