More than 450 people attended Belmont University’s Center for Business Ethics business conference Thursday in the Maddox Grand Atrium, an event featuring a speech and discussion lead by Harvard Business School professor Dr. Lynn Sharp Paine, author of the business best-seller Value Shift, on the need for increased attention to ethical standards for businesses. “In its 10 year history this is the largest conference by far that we have had,” said Dr. Harry Hollis, professor of management and director of the Center for Business Ethics. Paine’s proposal for “Generally Accepted Ethical Standards” to be adopted for business similar to the business community’s “Generally Accepted Accounting Practices” keyed the discussion.
Paine was introduced by Alan Yuspeh, senior vice president for ethics, compliance and corporate responsibility at HCA. Hollis reports that the audience included a few hundred members of the Nashville business community as well as students.
The event was sponsored by Ernst & Young, HCA, First Tennessee Bank and the university’s Center for Business Ethics and was free and open to the public.
Paine’s book, Value Shift: Why Companies Must Merge Social and Financial Imperatives to Achieve Superior Performance, (McGraw-Hill 2002), was a business best-seller in 2002 and was chosen by Library Journal as one of the Best Business Books of 2002. Her insights about business ethics “can save companies and save careers,” says Hollis.
Next up for the Center for Business Ethics: A seminar on healthcare ethics and compliance, for the hospital and healthcare industry, in December.
About the Center for Business Ethics
Belmont University’s Center for Business Ethics seeks to empower ethics leaders and bring people together and to help equip them to face the current crisis in business ethics.
