International academics, corporate and society leaders gather to explore best practices and challenges in business ethics, joining keynote speaker Pamela Paton, senior vice president and chief administration officer, corporate development and global relationship management at State Street Corporation, at Bentley University’s 8^th annual Global Business Ethics Symposium on Monday, May 21, 2012. The Bentley Center for Business Ethics and Bentley Alliance for Ethics and Social Responsibility present the event, sponsored by the State Street Foundation, Inc., the charitable grant-making arm of State Street Corporation.

“The theme of this year’s symposium program could not be more timely,” notes Tony Buono, Bentley professor and director of the Alliance for Ethics and Social Responsibility. “It seems that many of the supposed lessons from our latest financial crisis were far more short-lived than we had envisioned. We are witnessing an unsettling perception that corporate capitalism is morally bankrupt and that significant change is needed to re-establish the faith we need to have in our business system.”

Speakers also include Rajendra Sisodia, professor of marketing at Bentley University and chairman and co-founder of the Conscious Capitalism Institute; and Stephen B. Young, global executive director of the Caux Round Table.

This year’s event is also cosponsored by the UN Global Compact Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative in the spirit of creating a more sustainable, inclusive, multi-stakeholder oriented global economy. The program’s focus -- The Future of Capitalism: Ethics, Sustainable Practice, and the Global Economy – reflects many of the challenges our business system is faced with today.

The day-long program will feature panels focused on challenges faced by higher education and business, as well as broader trends in capitalism and future enterprise:

Responsible Management, Responsible Capitalism: Implications for Business Schools, moderated by Will O'Brien, executive-in-residence, Clark University Graduate School of Management. Panelists include:

• Jean-Christophe Carteron​, director for corporate social responsibility, Euromed Management, location
• Jonas Haertle​, head, Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) Secretariat, UN Global Compact Office
• ​Michael Johnson-Cramer​, ​associate professor of management and co-director, School of Management, Bucknell University

Governance and the Responsible Enterprise, moderated by Patricia M. Flynn, Trustee Professor of Economics and Management, Bentley University. Panelists include: 

• Shawn L. Berman, ​associate professor of management and a Bill Daniels Ethics Fellow, Anderson School of Management, University of New Mexico
• Matthew Patsky, managing partner and CEO, Trillium Asset Management
• ​​Kathleen Rehbein, associate professor of management, Marquette University

The Business of Peace: On the Place of Business in Responding to the Indian-Pakistani Conflict, moderated by Robert E. McNulty, director of programs, Center for Business Ethics, Bentley University and founder and executive director, Applied Ethics, Inc. This unique panel discussion will bring together an unlikely cohort of scholars from feuding nations. Panelists include:

• Huma Naz Siddiqi Baqai, chairperson of social science, Institute of Business Administration, Karachi, Pakistan
• Hashir Ibne Irshad, assistant professor, FAST National University, and head of Fast Consulting, Pakistan
• Jerome Joseph, professor, Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad, India
• Simrit Kaur, professor of public policy at the Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi, India

Capitalism and the Future Enterprise: Trends, Challenges and Possibilities, moderated by Cynthia Clark, assistant professor of management and director of the Harold S. Geneen Institute of Corporate Governance, Bentley University. Panelists include:

• R. Edward Freeman, university professor, Elis and Signe Olsson Professor, academic director of the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics, and senior fellow of the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics, University of Virginia Darden School of Business
• John Hasnas, director, Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics and associate professor of business and visiting associate professor of law, Georgetown University
• Andrew Hoffman, Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise, University of Michigan

The symposium, which is open to the public, will be followed by two workshops for selected faculty and doctoral students. Bentley’s four-day teaching workshop involves 16 professors from around the globe. This year, faculty hailing internationally from Canada, Ghana, India, Pakistan and Uganda and domestically from the U.S., Colorado, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin will join Bentley faculty in exploring the ways in which ethics, social responsibility, and sustainability can be incorporated into their discipline-based courses.

As a parallel program, three competitively selected doctoral students – this year from George Washington University, University of Houston, and St. Ambrose University – will join noted scholars from Marquette University, University of Michigan, and University of New Mexico in the 4^th Next Generation ESG Scholars Workshop.

For more information on the symposium and the leading experts on each panel, please go to http://www.bentley.edu/events/symposium/agenda.

Established in Memory of Timothy B. Harbert '76, Chairman and CEO of State Street Global Advisors and Trustee and Alumnus of Bentley University (then College), the partnership between Bentley and State Street unites business and higher education in an effort to build a strong ethical foundation from which to serve our many constituencies and communities.

STATE STREET CORPORATION (NYSE: STT) is one of the world's leading providers of financial services to institutional investors including investment servicing, investment management and investment research and trading. With $23.2 trillion in assets under custody and administration and $2 trillion* in assets under management at March 31, 2012, State Street operates in 29 countries and more than 100 geographic markets.  For more information, visit State Street’s web site at www.statestreet.com.

STATE STREET FOUNDATION is the charitable grant-making arm of State Street Corporation and provides funding for our strategic grant-making program, our disaster relief emergency assistance fund, and our Matching Gifts Program. Through our grant-making program, the Foundation works to generate and sustain positive change in the communities where we operate. We do this by supporting charitable organizations that provide economically disadvantaged citizens with the skills they need to be successful. Since its inception in 1977, the State Street Foundation has made grants totaling more than US$200 million. 

The PRINCIPLES FOR RESPONSIBLE MANAGEMENT EDUCATION (PRME) initiative is to inspire and champion responsible management education, research and thought leadership globally. The PRME are inspired by internationally accepted values such as the principles of the United Nations Global Compact. They seek to establish a process of continuous improvement among institutions of management education in order to develop a new generation of business leaders capable of managing the complex challenges faced by business and society in the 21st century. In the current academic environment, corporate responsibility and sustainability have entered but not yet become embedded in the mainstream of business-related education. The PRME are therefore a timely global call for business schools and universities worldwide to gradually adapt their curricula, research, teaching methodologies and institutional strategies to the new business challenges and opportunities.