Category: News

July Pegasus Now Available!

Here’s the July edition of Pegasus.

This issue is a deep dive into the human condition. Our contributors, Caux Round Table Fellows and Rich Broderick, Editor of Pegasus, from different perspectives converge on a common fact – our lives are bifurcated, simultaneously lived in different realms. One is the moral, the spiritual and the other material and practical.

Which one is real? The one in our minds or the one which we can touch?

Are there two realities which we intermediate or really only a single composite one, embracing different modes of being in the world?

I would be most interested in your thoughts and feedback.

New CRT Initiative: Monthly In-person Round Tables at Landmark Center

With the help of Zoom meetings, during the past year, the Caux Round Table (CRT) has, to an acceptable extent, successfully kept up the pace of situational engagement and contributing to thought leadership in most unusually circumstances. However, the dynamics of online round tables to me cannot replicate the quality of in-person discussions. The ideas and reflections seem more formal and there are fewer “ah hah” moments of insight and connection of dots as participants around the table easily engage in flowing exchanges and uninhibited contributions to the discernment process.

Thus, with the ending of restrictions on gatherings and meetings and with Landmark Center reopening to the public, we’ve scheduled a series of round tables for the last Tuesday of each month (except November) starting this month.

The proposed topic for consideration and its date are:

-“Infrastructure: A Public Good or Private Good? How Do We Get Value for Money?” Tuesday, June 29

-“Climate Change: What is the Problem? What is to Be Done and By Whom?” Tuesday, July 27

-“Social Media: Does Social Media Need a Code of Ethics?” Tuesday, August 31

-“Does Corporate Media Need a Code of Ethics?” Tuesday, September 28

-“The Financialization of Everything.” Tuesday, October 26

-“The New Racism: Normalizing a New Discourse Regime.” Date TBD

-“2021: The Year That Was.” Tuesday, December 28

These topics have been proposed as being worthy of reflection and deserving of sound intellectual analysis and policy recommendations. The topics implicate both caring for the common good and the CRT’s Principles for Business and Principles for Government.

All events will be held from 9:00 to 11:00 am in the Landmark Center in room 317.

Participation will be limited to 20 participants to allow for continued social distancing.

Registration fee is $10, which can be paid at the door.

To register for our June event on infrastructure, please email Jed at jed@cauxroundtable.net.

If you would like to register for additional round tables now, please email Jed.

Appointment of New CRT Fellows

It gives me great pleasure to announce the appointment of three new fellows – Mary Gentile, Matt Bostrom and Richard Bents. We are honored to have their advice and assistance in our work of providing thoughtful reflections and practical metrics on securing a more moral capitalism and more moral government.

Each has provided unique and important insight into values and the role they play in our lives and institutions. As the Caux Round Table (CRT) focuses more and more on the moral sense in each of us, which provides the foundation for civilization, their advice and recommendations will be timely and very relevant to the challenges of our times.

Mary C. Gentile, Ph.D., is Creator/Director of Giving Voice to Values. Giving Voice to Values, a pioneering business curriculum for values-driven leadership, has been featured in the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, Stanford Social Innovation Review, McKinsey Quarterly, etc. and piloted in over 1,260 business schools and organizations globally. She authored the award-winning book Giving Voice to Values: How to Speak Your Mind When You Know What’s Right, with translations in Chinese and Korean. She has also authored numerous other books and articles and partnered with Nomadic.fm in 2014 to launch six online interactive social cohort-based modules around Giving Voice to Values.

Mary is also Professor of Practice at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, senior advisor with the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program and consultant on management education and leadership development.

Among numerous other awards, Gentile was named as one of the “Top Minds 2017” by ComplianceWeek, one of the 2015 “100 Most Influential in Business Ethics” by Ethisphere and one of the “Top Thought Leaders in Trust: 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award Winners” by Trust Across America-Trust Around the World. She was recently short-listed for the Thinkers50 2019 award for “Ideas Into Practice” (having also been short-listed in 2017). Giving Voice to Values also won the Bronze Medal in the 2017 Reimagine Education Ethical Leadership Awards.

From 1985-95, Gentile was faculty member and manager of case research at Harvard Business School and one of the principal architects of HBS’s Leadership, Ethics and Corporate Responsibility curriculum. She co-authored Can Ethics Be Taught? Perspectives, Challenges and Approaches at Harvard Business School and was content expert for the award-winning interactive CD-ROM, “Managing Across Differences” (HBS Publishing).

Gentile earned her B.A. from the College of William and Mary and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the State University of New York-Buffalo.

Richard Bents, Ph.D., specializes in leadership development, personal and organizational change and transformation. He has demonstrated excellence in implementing strategic and cultural change efforts with large organizations, including AT&T, Deloitte Hungary, ICI Films Americas, Lucent Technologies, Lawson Software, Magyar Telekom, MOL Hungary and Roche Pharma.

Rich assisted the CRT in developing our proprietary Decision Styles Inventory, a confidential, psychometric assessment for individuals enhancing their unique mastery of approaches to reaching decisions which engage stakeholders.

His approach centers on the issues of authority, responsibility and power, demonstrating how they can be exercised more fully, leading to personal accountability and healthy synergistic change. The result is a client better equipped to move into the future with clearer customer focus, more practical data-bases and better understanding of organizational theory and the values they wish to project.

Dr. Bents is recognized internationally as an expert on leadership development and evaluation research. He works with European partners in counseling business and civic leaders and training psychologists and consultants in leadership and organizational development. In addition, he directed the graduate education program at Hamline University, providing leadership and direction in teaching, curriculum planning, faculty selection and program evaluation.

Rich is the co-author of several books on personality and learning. Other writing and research topics include training and development, adult learning styles, decision-making and related topics.

Matt Bostrom, Ph.D., has served with distinction in law enforcement. He began his career with the St. Paul Police Department in 1982 and served as a Patrol Officer, Sergeant, Lieutenant, Commander, Senior Commander, Chief of Staff and Assistant Chief of Operations. He was elected as Sheriff of Ramsey County, Minnesota, the state’s second most populous county.

Matt was twice nominated as National Sheriff of the Year and both times he was awarded the Medal of Merit from the National Sheriffs’ Association. Some of his accomplishments include reorganizing the department to improve effectiveness and efficiency by focusing on the vision, mission, values and beliefs; co-founding the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council; launching professional standards, comprehensive training and cooperative hiring initiatives; and engaging with the community to build relationships and prevent crime.

The hallmark of Matt’s service as Sheriff was a focus on increasing the level of trust between the community and police officers. Through listening to the community, he learned of their desire for police departments to hire for character and train for competence. In response, he launched a recruitment and hiring initiative that centered on selecting men and women who possessed four observable character traits: trustworthy, truthful, responsible and respectful. This initiative increased community trust and improved police officer work habits, including sick time usage, discipline and commendations.

In addition to graduating from the FBI National Academy, Matt received his B.S. from the University of Northwestern, M.A. from the University of Saint Thomas, D.P.A. from Hamline University and Ph.D. (criminology) at the University of Oxford.

The Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford invited Matt to develop a replicable model for increasing police trust by identifying and aligning the community’s values with those of the police. It is through the operationalization of these shared values in police officer recruitment, selection and training that can lead to increased trust between police officers and the communities they serve.

Matt has 10 years of experience as an Adjunct Professor at Saint Mary’s University, University of Northwestern and Hamline University. He co-authored Character-Based Police Officer Selection for the U.S. Department of Justice and his dissertation topics include The Influence of Higher Education on Police Officer Work Habits and Increasing Police Trust through Normative Alignment.

March Pegasus Now Available!

Here is the March edition of Pegasus.

In this issue, we revisit the Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities of 1997 and how it relates to our principles.

We also include excerpts from a recent report of the Coalition for Inclusive Capitalism, background on our new initiative to recognize distinguished business leadership in social responsibility and a comment about our rather special practice of “round tables.”

I would be most interested in your thoughts and feedback.

Request for Support

I ask you to consider supporting the work of the Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism with a donation to our operating budget.

I attach our 2020 Year in Review (annual report) to document our contributions and successes during last year.

We seem to have a unique role to play – in a free space to expand and have influence in between business, academia, foundations and governments, drawing on all, but dependent on none, to fashion with our round tables sound, new departures for action and vision.

At a time of pandemic, when so much in our lives is uncertain, uneasy and stressful, reliable, but most importantly, determined leadership, is more necessary than ever. Leadership, as always, depends on ideas and moral conviction. We, therefore, seek to support all with both, so that their leadership will rise to the demanding challenges of our time. My father used to say “Never show the white feather,” especially when others on the team look to us for reassurance and steady stewardship.

For 2021, our priority will be to launch online certificate educational programs on the theory and practice of moral capitalism and moral government. These web-based modules will be accessible globally. Through education, we plan to inspire and stimulate individuals to make their respective contributions to better outcomes in business and civic justice.

Secondly, we will propose more collaboration and coordination among the now many efforts promoting sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and alignment of enterprise with care for the environment, society and governance.

Thirdly, we will continue to provide thought leadership through round tables, our newsletter Pegasus and workshops on modernizing valuation.

Given the difficulties caused by the pandemic for traditional means of outreach in solicitation of support and personally engaging with donors and supporters, we hope you can be especially generous with your contribution this year.

You can donate via PayPal.

If you would like to mail a check, our address is 75 West Fifth Street, Suite 219, St. Paul, MN 55102.

If you would like to contribute via wire transfer, please reply to this message.

Anything you can give would be most appreciated.