| Following on from last year's
first ever European conference for ethics and compliance practitioners, Sharing
Ideas and Best Practices in Business Ethics, the 100 delegates voted overwhelming
in favour of having another conference in 2005. The event organisers were again
the Cercle D'Éthique
des Affaires - Cercle Européen des Déontologues (CEA-CED) of
France, the Ethics Officer Association (EOA)
of the United States, the European Business Ethics
Network (EBEN), and the Institute of Business Ethics
(IBE) of the UK. In 2004 a number of people asked to register for the meeting
after it was fully subscribed, this year because of both demand and the venues
capacity, over 120 corporate ethics practitioners from nine European countries*
, the U.S, and Japan attended the one and a half day event. The event started
with a cocktail party on the eve of the conference kindly sponsored by Baxter
Healthcare. This acted as an 'ice-breaker' and an chance for delegates and organisers
alike to be meet informally. The conference provided an opportunity for
ethics and compliance practitioners to meet their counterparts, share ideas and
best practices, and form the basis for a continuing dialogue among ethics and
compliance professionals in organisations. The participants came from a range
of industries, including information technology, telecommunications, mining and
extractive, defence, banking and insurance, utilities, automotive, tobacco, and
pharmaceutical. The conference was designed to allow maximum time for discussion,
debate, and networking. A plenary meeting was held at the start of each day. These
were followed by a series of breakout sessions. Each of these were introduced
with a case study by the speaker(s). A rapporteur (reporter) to presented a summary
of the group's discussion during subsequent 'report back' sessions. This approach
ensured that all attendees could heard and discussed the main points from each
of the workshops. The opening plenary on the first day discussed ways that
companies can build a culture of integrity and the challenges that large multi-nationals
face. Presentations were made by representatives from BP, L'Oreal and Baxter International.
The second days plenary addressed the recent developments in UK, EU and US legislation.
The panel included representatives from Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw. The
breakout sessions addressed a number of key business ethics issues facing today's
organisations, with the four main themes emerging as: cross-cultural behaviours;
the legal implications with regard to ethics in organisations; making it work:
embedding ethics in organisations; and a number of 'recurring issues' that practitioners
experience. There were twelve breakout sessions this year, four more than last
year.
The breakout sessions were as follows:
Day 1
Morning - Bribery&
Corruption: Grand corruption
- Influencing the Company's behaviour
- Making
it work: Training and embedding
- Recurring issues: Conflicts of interest
Afternoon - Whistle
blowing - where are we today?
- Cross-cultural issues: Donations - the
power of patronage (political and philanthropic)
- Making it work: Communicating
internally and externally
- Recurring issues: Supply chain/use of agents
A dinner was held in the evening for all delegates at the Foreign
and Commonwealth Office and kindly sponsored by BP. The guest speaker, introduced
by Philippa Foster Back, Director of the IBE, was Sir Alistair Graham, Chair,
Committee on Standards in Public Life. Day 2
Breakout sessions
were as follows: - Doing Business in difficult countries: Facilitation
payments
- Cross-cultural issues: Discrimination & diversity
- Making
it work: measuring and auditing ethical performance
- Recurring issues:
workplace ethics
Breakout session speakers were from BAA, Bertelsmann,
BG, BOC, Boeing, Cabinet Coudert, Dow Corning, GE Health Care, GSK, HSBC, Lloyds
TSB, Merck, Philips, Statoil and Total. Rapporteurs were from Baxter, BP, the
Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation, Colgate Palmolive, EDF, Eisai, MeadWestvaco,
mmO2, Northrop Grumman, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Severn Trent. In discussion
at the conclusion of the conference, delegates voted for another meeting of this
sort to take place in 2006 and made suggestions through the feedback form about
what they would like addressed at the next meeting. For further details,
please contact: Yvan Biefnot CEA/CED yvan.biefnot@chello.be
Patrick
Du Besset CEA/CED pdubc@noos.fr
Lee Essrig
EOA lessrig@eoa.org
Philippa Foster
Back IBE pfb@ibe.org.uk
Heidi von Weltzien
Hoivik EBEN heidi.hoivik@bi.no
*Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, United
Kingdom.
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