Business ethics in the hot seat at XLRI-Xavier School of Management’s forum

NEW DELHI, MAY 15: XLRI-Xavier School of Management in cooperation with Indo-German Chamber of Commerce (IGCC) and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) recently conducted a discussion forum on ‘practice of business ethics in business management in the 21st Century’ in Mumbai.

The discussions re-evaluated the moral justification of business decisions and their consequences in the current market. Representatives of industry and academia deliberated on the need of ethics in the workplace and industry at the forum titled “Business Management in the 21st Century: Legal, Ethical, Moral, Spiritual (LEMS) Challenges.”

LEMS theory of business ethics assumes importance in this age of low labour-cost and high capital intensive market strategies that cite competitive pressures as the reason for the same. It focuses on the business practices of modern corporates, which still rely on outdated business management principles.

Emphasis was put on the dignity of labour and the need to create a just society. “We need strong corporate ethics at all levels. We define and study corporate ethics and morals as lived, experienced and shared dynamic systems of socially accepted, morally universal, values and principles, standards and rules that can spiritually empower our life and society, our markets and our world,” said Fr. Oswald Mascarenhas, S.J. JRD Tata Chair Professor of Business Ethics at XLRI during the keynote address.

Sustainable Enterprise Development Specialist at the ILO’s Decent Work Technical Support Team (DWT) for South Asia Kelvin A. Sergeant, Sustainability Manager at the Indian Hotels Company Limited Shahana Mazumdar, and India Coordinator for the UNI Global Union Anjali Bedekar participated in the discussions.