A workshop grant was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council with additional support from Export Development Canada and York’s new Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies.

More details at www.cbern.ca/cbern_events/past_events/business_human_rights/.

CBERN at the Society for Business Ethics Annual Meeting
Founded in 1980, the Society for Business Ethics (SBE) is an international association of scholars and others interested in business ethics. This year the Society will meet in Montréal on August 7-10.

The annual meeting provides an opportunity for SBE members to present their own research results, to become acquainted with the latest developments in teaching and research, to engage in the discussion of emerging business ethics issues, and to enjoy the fellowship of other scholars and professionals in the field.

CBERN is organizing a panel session on Ethics and Mining. A CBERN sponsored reception will follow the conclusion of the panel discussion. Keep an eye on our website for more details.

CBERN and the Social Investment Organization
CBERN is pleased to announce that it has obtained an Institutional Membership with the Social Investment Organization. Benefits of membership include access to the SIO Listserve, an information exchange for all organizational, professional, associate and sustaining members across Canada.

Established in 1989, the Social Investment Organization (SIO) is the national non-profit association for the socially responsible investment industry in Canada.

CBERN at ISBEE: A Follow Up Report
By Prof. Frederick Bird, CBERN Participant
For its meetings held in Cape Town, South Africa, in July, 2008, The International Society for Business, Economics, and Ethics (ISBEE) invited scholars to prepare a series of papers for a panel discussion looking at Fairness in International Trade and Investment from the perspectives of Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and North America. Several of us at the University of Waterloo decided to respond to this invitation. Peter Woolstencroft from Political Science and Thomas Vance from the School of Accounting and Finance joined with me to undertake the relevant research, to write a paper, and present it at the ISBEE conference. We applied and received a small grant from CBERN to help cover costs both for some preliminary investigations by a research assistant and the costs for me to travel to the conference, where I presented a preliminary version of our paper. Our paper is entitled “Fairness in International Trade and Investment: North American Perspectives.”

This paper reviews the practices and differing sets of attitudes North Americans have taken with respect to fairness in international trade and proposes a set of common considerations for ongoing debates about these matters. After reviewing the asymmetrical relations between Canada, the United States and Mexico and the impact of multilateral trade agreements on bilateral trade between these countries, the paper looks at four typical normative views with respect to trade held by North Americans. These variously emphasize concerns for protectionism (traditionally the dominant view), liberal fair play (which has more recently become the prevailing established view), a concern for distributive justice (as articulated by Stiglitz and others), and dissent in the name of the environment or working classes. Acknowledging that these on-going debates over what is fair are not likely to be easily resolved, in this paper, we call for open political processes that allow these debates to proceed in ways that allow for reasonable political compromises.  We identify five common points of reference that might usefully inform these debates. These include 1) respect for flexibility, 2) regard for the importance of institutions, 3) greater attention to the commutative justice principles for fair exchanges and corresponding guarantees so that all countries possess basic power to bargain effectively on their own behalf, 4) the need to find fitting balance between local, national, regional and international trade, and 5) more concern for the ways false pricing and abusive transfer pricing distort international trading relations.

In this paper we note the ways in which the larger multi-lateral arrangements of the WTO help countries like Canada and Mexico in their asymmetrical bilateral trading arrangements with countries like the United States. We call for a fuller explorations of the ways the principles of commutative justice, rightly understood, might usefully guide discussion not only about trade between nations but business ethics more generally. We especially argue issues with respect to abusive transfer pricing and mis-pricing have far too long been ignored or given too little attention both with respect to international trade and the role of international businesses in developing areas.

Our essay is being published in two places. It has been included in a special issue of the Journal of Business Ethics (Volume 84, supplement 3, 2009), edited by Geoff Moore and Christopher Stuckelberger on “Global and Contextual Values for Business in a Changing World.” All of the essays in this special issue were initially presented at the ISBEE conference. Our essay will also be included in a book soon to be published by Springer, edited by Geoff Moore, on “Fairness in International Trade.” This book also includes essays originally presented at the ISBEE conference, grouped into two parts: one focusing on “Economic development, wealth creation, and Africa” and the other part on “Fairness in international trade -- a global perspective.”

A World Wide Survey of Business Ethics
CBERN, in partnership with Globethics.net, is conducting research in Canada that will contribute to a comprehensive international survey of economic and business ethics activity in 2010.

For the purposes of this survey, business ethics has been broadly defined to include:

• Economic ethics and sustainability (macro-level),
• Corporate responsibility and corporate citizenship (meso-level), and
• Intra-organizational business ethics (micro-level).

The survey is being conducted in nine regions: Latin America, North America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, Middle East & North Africa, Central Asia, South & South-East Asia, East Asia and Oceania. Individual researchers and institutions (like universities, associations, centers, research institutes, and NGO’s) that are actively involved in the field of business ethics will be surveyed regarding:

• The terms they use to refer to business ethics in their national language(s),
• The training programs they offer or facilitate,
• The formal academic courses they offer or facilitate,
• The research they conduct,
• The publications they produce, and
• The major challenges that they foresee in business ethics in the future.

By collating and comparing the above information from around the world a global profile of the field of business ethics will be generated.
This project will produce:

• A global report on business ethics as field of teaching, training and research (book project),
• A special edition of an academic journal providing a global perspective on business ethics as academic field,
• A global bibliography of business ethics books and journals,
• A global directory of individuals and institutions with expertise in business ethics, and
• A Global Handbook of Research in Business Ethics written by the nine regional coordinators. This handbook will identify broad patterns in approaches, methodologies and topics in business ethics research in each region.