On Nov, 19^th, 2012, Dr.Gilbert LENSSEN, President of European Academy of Business in Society (EABIS), gave a lecture named “Globalization and Sustainable Development: from Corporate Responsibility to Sustainable Development”. The lecture was hosted by China Institute of Social Responsibility in Beijing Normal University. Representative from CIBE was invited and attended.

Firstly, Dr. LENSSEN briefly introduced EABIS to the audience. Then, he explained the relationship between corporate responsibility and sustainable development by elaborating the evolving of the context “corporate responsibility”. As is pointed out by him, people’s understanding of corporate responsibility has several stages: it is ethic oriented in the first stage when stakeholders and the legitimacy of corporate operation are prioritized. Then, it is business oriented when strategic managements full play of comparative advantage is conducted. At last, corporate governance becomes the ultimate goal when collaborative advantage and industry governance is focused. Due to the rapid development of globalization and information communication technology as well as environmental pollution and the exhaustion of resources, enterprises face more complicated problems when assuming social responsibility. Therefore, they must pursue shared values and create long-term values for all stakeholders so that sustainable enterprises and the sustainable development in the whole world can be achieved. Later, Dr. LENSSEN demonstrated IBM Smarter Planet solution which focuses on redesign infrastructure & operation system to achieve the reduction of energy and an increase of efficiency so that the win-win situation of corporate and society is realized.

 

The next day, Dr. LENSSEN visited CIBE and discussed with Professor Liu Baocheng, director of CIBE about how to alleviate poverty through selling folk work on the art websites.