On the evening of November 14th, Dr. Klaus M. Leisinger, who serves as Special Advisor in the United Nations Global Compact and as a Senior Advisor for post 2015 Development issues and business ethics, was invited by Dr. Liu Baocheng and gave a wonderful speech to the MBA students of the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE). The topic on which he spoke was Global Values of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Due to this wonderful speech, students started to consider the sustainable development of the society from the perspective of global value and the role-played by the enterprises.
Dr. Leisinger introduced the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact at first. Then, he listed several problems that global corporates may come across under those Principles and put forward effective solutions for those problems. Through the speech, Dr. Leisinger emphasized the role enterprises should play and how enterprises achieve greater goals by taking up social responsibility. He also mentioned that carbon emission reduction was very important for Post Millennium sustainable development. In addition, he said that the ways to take advantage of global values for the enterprises’ progress was the biggest challenge for the students.
Finally, Dr. Leisinger interacted with the students in a Q&A session. In the last, he shared a prophetic story to demonstrate his opinion that the future is in our hands. The speech ended with a loud and long applause. All the students were impressed by Dr. Leisinger’ spirit as well as his profound knowledge and everyone benefited a lot by his speech.
Background
Klaus M. Leisinger
Dr. Klaus M. Leisinger is the founder and president of the Global Values Alliance Foundation in Basel. Until September 2013 he has been the President and CEO of the Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development. He studied economics and social sciences at the University of Basel in Switzerland, earned his doctorate in Economics, and did his post-doctorate in Sociology.
Klaus Leisinger is the Professor of Sociology at the University of Basel where is does research and teaches business ethics, corporate responsibility as well as general topics of international development. He has contributed to the academic debate widely through articles in peer-reviewed journals and books in several languages.
Klaus Leisinger serves as a guest lecturer in several universities, e.g. University of Notre Dame, the MIT Sloan School of Management (Cambridge), DePaul University (Chicago) and at Harvard University. He served as a Special Advisor in the United Nations Global Compact to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and continues to serve as a senior advisor for post 2015 Development issues and business ethics.
The UN Global Compact's Ten Principles:
1: Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights; and
2: make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses.
3: Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right
to collective bargaining;
4: the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labor;
5: the effective abolition of child labor; and
6: the elimination of discrimination with respect to employment and occupation.
7: Businesses should support a precautionary approach towards environmental challenges;
8: undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility; and
9: encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies.
10: Businesses should work against corruption in all of its forms, including extortion and bribery. |
