Caux Round Table Honors Mary Brainerd, President and CEO of HealthPartners, for Outstanding Citizenship

 

On Friday, January 6^th, the Caux Round Table presented its 2011 Award for Outstanding Citizenship to Mary Brainerd, President and CEO of HealthPartners, the largest, consumer-governed, nonprofit, health care organization in the U.S.  Under her leadership, HealthPartners has been recognized as a national leader in the health care industry. 

Brainerd is one of the founding CEOs of the Itasca Project, a group of forty government, civic and business leaders who work together to address the various issues that impact long-term, economic growth, including jobs, education, transportation and economic disparities.  She also serves on the boards of Securian Financial Group, Minnesota Council of Health Plans, Saint Paul Foundation/Minnesota Philanthropy Partners, Minneapolis Federal Reserve and SurModics.  

In remarks given after receiving the award, Brainerd articulated the need for citizenship and high standards of conduct as set forth by the Caux Round Table Principles for Business.

New Caux Round Table Publication Launched in Singapore

We're excited to announce that our colleagues in Singapore have launched a new publication called "Pathways" to build more awareness of the Caux Round Table among that country's opinion-leaders.

The first issue (linked below) contains, among other things, two very important articles by our colleagues Ambassador Tommy Koh of the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Professor Bob Fleming of the Business School of the National University of Singapore. Amb. Koh discusses the growing importance of CSR for Asia as it assumes growing importance in the global economy. Prof. Fleming provides a summary of his report on selected portfolio companies owned by Temasek, the very successful Government of Singapore asset management company, and looks at the applicability of the CRT ethical Principles for Business to leading Singapore companies.

To read the inaugural edition of "Pathways," please click here.

2011 Caux Round Table Global Dialogue Concluding Statement

The 26^th Caux Round Table Global Dialogue was held in Washington, D.C. on July 28^th and 29^th at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters just before the riots in the United Kingdom and the precipitous fall in prices on the New York Stock Exchange.

As you will see in the concluding statement from the Dialogue (linked here), participants foresaw the ethical weaknesses that led to both of these dramatically upsetting events. Riots and arson and the collapse of faith in American public governance at the national level reflect shortcomings in leadership. Something has gone wrong at high levels when minority communities in London take to criminality and partisan intransigence in Washington prevents remedial action to remove threats to America's long-term prosperity.
What has happened to the collective capacity to provide for the common good in these two oldest of constitutional democracies?

Some at the Global Dialogue believed that the West, in particular, has a leadership crisis. Others believed it was a global shortcoming seen in Japan and China and in the aftermath of the Arab Spring revolutions as well.

We can take no consolation from the knowledge that, since leadership ultimately rests on good values, a leadership crisis is really a failure of values and of the spirit.

When there is no respect for others, ethics is at a very low point and the crisis comes on through widespread promotion of what is best for the self with the Devil taking the hindmost.

To read the statement, please click here. 

Ten Years of Corporate Social Responsibility Awards in Mexico

The president of Caux Round Table Mexico, Sr. Gustavo de La Torre, recently provided a report on 10 years of CSR awards in Mexico. Sr. de La Torre has devoted much time and energy over these years with his colleagues in Mexico to develop an annual awards program that would stimulate Mexican companies and business leaders and family owners to seek recognition for their CSR contributions to Mexico and the Mexican economy.

The program is exemplary and an example for countries all over the world. Gustavo and his colleagues are ready to assist any group that would like to start its own CSR awards program in their city, region or country.

By distributing this report widely, we intend to honor the achievements of all our colleagues in Mexico who have contributed to this success.

To view the report, please click here.
 

Caux Round Table Joins G20 Advocacy Coalition to Demand Greater Accountability in Global Financial System

As the U.S. prepares for the upcoming G20 Summit in Seoul, we urge the U.S. government to lead the discussion on transparency by advocating for strong positions that will create greater accountability in the global financial system in order to promote economic development and alleviate poverty.  The G20 has claimed, "the era of bank secrecy is over." It is now time for the United States to step forward and make that claim a reality. We ask the U.S. government to champion these positions within the G20 Communique.

 
The Mountain House Statement

The Caux Round Table announces the release of The Mountain House Statement setting forth a common position among the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions of social thought on sound ethical values to be used in management of the global economy. The Mountain House Statement offers hope for the world. The Mountain House Statement was collaboratively written by distinguished scholars from the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faith traditions. They were convened at Mountain House, in Caux, Switzerland, by the Caux Round Table, His Eminence Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, former Archbishop of Washington, DC, Ronald Thiemann, Bussey Professor of Theology and former Dean at the Harvard Divinity School, and Ibrahim Zein, Professor of Islamic Studies and Comparative Religion and Dean of the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization at the International Islamic University, Malaysia.

To read the statement, please click here.

Caux Round Table Honors Marilyn Carlson Nelson, Chair of Carlson, for Outstanding Citizenship

Recently, the Caux Round Table presented its 2010 Outstanding Citizenship Award to Marilyn Carlson Nelson, Chair and former CEO of The Carlson Companies, a global company in the hospitality industry (Radisson Hotels and Carlson Wagonlit Travel). Carlson Nelson co-chaired the 2004 World Economic Forum in Davos and is a member of the Forum's International Business Council. She is also a co-founder of the Woman Leader's Program of the Forum and founded the Center for Integrative Leadership at the University of Minnesota.  Under her leadership, the Carlson Companies was the first major North American travel company to take a stand against the sexual exploitation of children in the tourism industry.  In very personal remarks given after receiving the CRT's recognition award, she articulated the need for citizenship and high standards of conduct as set forth by the CRT's Principles.

To read her remarks, please click here.

Caux Round Table Hosts Event with Congressman Barney Frank

On Saturday, May 8th, Congressman Barney Frank, Chair of the House Committee on Financial Services, spoke about the future of financial services in the U.S. Dave Beal, a reporter with MinnPost and friend of the Caux Round Table, covered the event. To read his article, please click here.

OPINION ESSAYS

High Frequency Trading: A Public Good? (Stephen B. Young, Global Executive Director, Caux Round Table). I am increasingly drawn to the proposition that financial markets and capitalism are not soul-mates. They are more like fractious siblings competing for parental attention, or narcissistic partners in a rocky marriage, each needing the other but each fearful of the other’s shortcomings. There is a close tie between them which can’t be totally severed. Traders in financial markets need real economic activity and growth in order to have financial contracts - stock, loans, options, derivatives, insurance guarantees, etc. - to buy and sell. Finance has no social purpose other than gambling unless there are related economic transactions to use the money which is bought and sold in financial markets. Read on . . .

The Moral Instinct and Organizational Excellence - An American Perspective (Prof. Doran Hunter, Research Fellow, Caux Round Table). Thomas Jefferson, in a 1787 letter to Peter Carr, made a profound observation about human nature that only now is being verified by neuroscience and behavioral genetics studies. Man is, Jefferson wrote, a social animal and is “endowed with a sense of right and wrong.” If one would “State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor … the former [would] decide it well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.” Today neurobiologists and psychologists are scientifically confirming Jefferson’s observation by demonstrating that human beings are “hard wired” to make initial moral judgments without knowing why they are making them and then using reason to support their judgments. The content of such judgments seems to be an emotional human need to treat others as one wishes to be treated. It seems that David Hume was correct: reason is the slave of human emotions. Could this human predisposition to act morally in most situations explain why 95% of business arrangements and other forms of negotiable agreements and understandings are carried out with honesty, fairness and probity? Read more ...

CSR and Public Goods (Stephen B. Young, Global Executive Director, Caux Round Table). A month or so ago I suggested that a very helpful way to understand corporate social responsibility within capitalism is to think of it in structural/functional terms as a mediating process for the private business enterprise with its environment. Private enterprise does not have modern society all to itself. There is government and there is, increasingly, civil society. Private enterprise seeks profit within the rules and regulations set down by government and ingests the social capital provided by civil society. The interactions among business, government, and civil society need constant mediation as a function of successful business enterprise. Such mediation, I suggested, is the function of CSR and CSR managers. Read more . . .

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