Feel free to forward to your own local or national media and to your relevant best contacts this press release that ebbf has just sent out to world media.
And if you want to interact around these and other relevant principles for your work, there are still some places available at the ebbf annual conference, an opportunity to meet an international group of like-minded leaders and peers: http://makeitmeaningful.org
THE VALUE OF VALUES
A statement from EBBF (www.dev.ebbf.world) on the occasion of the 2nd Global Ethics Forum,Geneva
Geneva, 1st July 2011 – What lessons can be learned from the recent crises, both human-made and natural? What is ‘spiritual leadership? Can we create voluntary standards that work? Are there values that cross cultural and national boundaries? These are just some of the themes of the second Global Ethics Forum titled ‘The Value of Values’ taking place in Geneva. ebbf is privileged to be a partner in this event a project of the Globethics.net Foundation.
ebbf believes it is vital that we try to achieve broad consensus on the operating principles that will shape a new model for our society, “a new paradigm of work”.
Such principles will engender an attitude, a will, a dynamic that will enable us to find practical measures contributing to the creation of that model.
ebbf proposes for consideration a few key principles:
– Recognizing the unity of humankind, the definition of stakeholders, in a global economy, has to be expanded to include the whole population of the world and its environment.
– Change is necessary and it needs to be based on ethical decisions, voluntarily made after non-adversarial discussion.
– There must be a correlation between risk and reward. It is not acceptable that a corporation maximizes its profit from a particular activity but escapes the consequences when things go wrong and passes the responsibility and burden of a rescue onto society at large.
– Business must look beyond the short-term and draw upon values and ethical principles to identify the long-term consequences of their actions and decisions.
– It is more important to debate on how to promote values and their implementation than to choose between regulation or voluntary standards.
Considered only in the abstract, few would dispute the essential merit of these principles. Yet their implementation will have profound and challenging political, economic, social, and personal implications.
ebbf believes that for business to be successful in the short and long run it should fulfil its potential to contribute to the necessary transformation of society, it needs to adopt values that will enable it to transform itself into a sector that takes greater responsibility for its impact on people, communities and the environment.
“If business is to become part of the solution instead of part of the problem,” said Mahmud Samandari, chair of ebbf, “it will need to see the value of values that will lead to that transformation. The Global Ethics Forum is a good place to start.”
ABOUT EBBF ebbf is a spiritually inspired non-governmental organisation dedicated to bringing ethical values, personal virtues and moral leadership into our workplaces. Its diverse members and contributors span over sixty countries and cross generations, sectors and beliefs. For more information read the – about ebbf webpage –