Much has happened since our last official newsletter. In March 2007, CBERN received word that it had been successful in the Strategic Knowledge Cluster Grant Application made on 20 November 2006. With the awarding of the seven-year $2.1 million grant from SSHRC, CBERN was able to move forward at a quicker pace.
Ethics at the Interface of Business and Healthcare
CBERN Western Regional Workshop
CBERN Eastern Regional Workshop
Intrafinity awarded contract as CBERN website developer and host
CBERN to co-host a Toronto Roundtable on Sustainable Enterprise
CBERN Launch, 27-30 September, Toronto
CBERN Western Regional Workshop
A western regional workshop was held at the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, 20 April. The workshop began with a brief review of the SSHRC grant application, the organizational structure for CBERN set out in that grant application, the role of the HUB and the team that has been assembled to fulfill the responsibilities of the HUB. The bulk of the meeting was spent exploring the hopes and visions of those participating in the workshop for CBERN. A number of themes emerged from the discussion and several tasks were assigned to workshop participants. For Minutes of the workshop, visit: http://www.businessethicscanada.ca/about/index.html
Ethics at the Interface of Business and Healthcare
On 5 June 2007, CBERN hosted a symposium at the ASAC Conference on Interface of Business and Healthcare. The symposium introduced an SSHRC RDI research project whose goal is to advance understanding of the ethical values that do and should determine priorities when business values intersect with healthcare values in our healthcare system. The symposium focused on a decision recently taken by the Ethics Committee of a Canadian hospital to refuse a substantial gift of money. A review of the symposium can be found at: http://www.businessethicscanada.ca/about/index.html
CBERN Eastern Regional Workshop
Following upon the CBERN Western Regional Workshop held in Calgary on 20 April, an Eastern Regional Workshop was held in Ottawa, 5-6 June. The workshop covered the priorities and goals for the Network and included an introduction to CBERN on-line networking tools. Discussions also centred around the research needs assessments across the four sectors (NGO, government, private, academic), the research themes proposed in the SSHRC CBERN application: ethics at the business/healthcare interface, business and human right, and business and spirituality, as well as a public dialogue needs assessment. Minutes for the workshop will soon be available at: http://www.businessethicscanada.ca/about/index.html
Intrafinity awarded contract as CBERN website developer and host
The CBERN website is undergoing a major renovation, aimed at providing participants with the collaborative workspace and related technology that will help them connect with each other for knowledge exchange and mobilization, developing research, and a host of other activities yet to be defined. Because the website renovation is a major project, we asked for proposals from several companies. After a concentrated proposal evaluation process, we chose to go with Intrafinity Inc., a company with a proven product and experience with networks similar to CBERN. The CBERN team is looking forward to working with Intrafinity to make the CBERN vision a reality.
CBERN to co-host a Toronto Roundtable on Sustainable Enterprise
On 27 September, CBERN will co-host one in a series of international invitation-only roundtables on sustainable enterprise. This will be one of several multi-stakeholder learning forums bringing together diverse groups of people (mostly, but not exclusively, practitioners) from business, government, non-governmental organisations and civil society; big and small; institutional and non-institutional. The roundtable is one in a series of successful roundtables convened by the Applied Research Centre in Human Security at Coventry University and chaired by Malcolm McIntosh, Director of the Centre. Other international roundtables are scheduled to take place in 2007 in Brussels, Geneva, Cape Town and Sydney.
CBERN Launch, 27-30 September, Toronto
The official Launch of CBERN will take place 27-30 September, at York University. Participation in the launch conference is by invitation only. You may be surprised to learn that there were about 70 people who participated in the application in one form or another. A small number of other people have been added to the list. The purpose of the launch will be to provide an opportunity for those participating in the SSHRC application to meet each other, review the network’s goals and objectives and set some directions for the future. The purpose of the conference is not to do research or present each other’s research. Rather, its purpose is to understand how the network can be used to support research in Canada, communicate the results of that research broadly, enrich public discourse on business ethics issues and build capacity in the field of business ethics.
Friday evening, September 28, we are planning a public dialogue event to which the public will be invited. The event will be carried electronically on the web. Our plan is to use the event to explore ways of using scholarly research to enrich and broaden the reach of public dialogue on business ethics issues. We will be circulating more information about this event later.
In the coming weeks more detailed information about the launch will be found on the CBERN website at: http://www.businessethicscanada.ca/about/index.html