|
DATE: January 14, 2005
|
Andrea Hugg
(214)768-4474
|
OR
|
Lindsay Hogan
(214)768-1794
|
EDS AND SMU TO SPONSOR CONFERENCE ON ETHICS AS A WAY OF DOING BUSINESS
DALLAS (SMU)- EDS and Southern Methodist University are sponsoring the first in a series of roundtables to discuss how local businesses can improve the way they address ethical concerns. "Ethics as a Business Principle: North Texas Business Ethics Roundtable" will be Thursday, Oct. 14 from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Radisson Central Dallas, 6060 North Central Expressway. Cost of attending the conference is $49, which includes a continental breakfast and lunch. The deadline for registering is Oct. 11. To register, call (214) 768-4255.
The SMU Edwin L. Cox School of Business, the SMU Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility, and the EDS Office of Ethics and Business Conduct are organizing the conference. Workshops will be presented on small business ethical issues; starting an ethics organization; ethics and leadership; social responsibilities; ethics training and curriculum; ethics in procurement; and the business value of ethics.
Guest speakers are Jack Lowe Jr., chief executive officer of TDIndustries, a Dallas-based heating and plumbing contracting firm, which is nationally recognized as one of the best companies in America to work for because of its pioneering practice of servant-leadership, the belief that managers should serve their employees; and Edward Petry, Ph.D., president of the Ethics Officer Association, a professional group for corporate ethics and compliance officers with more than 600 members.
The conference organizers say a systematic, formal approach to ethics is a growing business specialty. Companies rely on ethics officers, sometimes called compliance officers, to address ethical concerns and investigate violations. Corporate ethics officers write codes of conduct that may cover such areas as gift giving, sexual improprieties and foreign business practices, to name a few.
Gary Hill, global ethics officer for EDS and a workshop presenter, says where once executives responsible for ethics mainly ensured compliance with various federal and state laws and regulations, today their emphasis is much broader in scope, helping to define the ethical beliefs and practices of an organization's culture. For example, EDS has a staff of three ethics officers who report to the company's chief executive officer and to its board of directors. All EDS employees must abide by a global code of conduct and all have access to a confidential helpline to report ethical concerns or violations.
Hill says an annual roundtable for North Texas companies is a way to offer the resources of EDS and SMU to local companies interested in improving their approach to business ethics. "We want the North Texas Business Ethics Roundtable to become a recurring event to help businesses interested in developing their own ethics office. It is not enough to rely on your corporate culture to protect you anymore. Companies without a formalized system of addressing ethical concerns put themselves at risk," says Hill.
Another objective of this first roundtable is to form a local network of business people, corporate ethics officers and university ethicists willing to meet informally and exchange information.
"We want the SMU Maguire Center and the Cox School of Business to be the core of this network, a place for people who are interested in ethics. Our role will be to coordinate more of these discussions," says Dick Mason, director of the SMU Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility and the Carr P. Collins Jr. Distinguished Professor of Information Systems and Operations Management in the Cox School of Business.
|
