23.11.2011

Workshop "Ethical Dilemmas in Business for Academia"

Workshop "Ethical Dilemmas in Business for Academia"

The “Ethical Dilemmas in Business” workshop for academia was held on November 23, 2011 in Taras Shevchenko National University, organized by the Global Compact Network Ukraine with the support of Ukrainian Associationfor Business and Management Education Development, and the Faculty of Economics at Taras Shevchenko National University. The event welcomed nearly 70 representatives of 28 Ukrainian higher educational institutions as well as 2 research institutes of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and Volyn Institutefor DevelopmentSupport of Civic Initiatives.

The first part of the workshop was devoted to the problem of gaining professional competences in Corporate Social Responsibility for Ukrainian students of all backgrounds. The head of the Board of Ukrainian Associationfor Business and Management Educationas well as the head of the working group on developing materials for “Corporate Social Responsibility” discipline Ms. Nina Ushakova presented results of the work of the group. Among those was successful integration of “Corporate Social Responsibility” discipline in educational curriculum for undergraduate students in 30 Ukrainian universities. Besides, different options for the development of professional competences in Corporate Social Responsibility at the graduate level were discussed as directions for future work.

In the second part of the meeting Ms. Svitlana Kalashnikova, vice-rector for innovative development of Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, delivered a presentation on responsive leadership. The main focus of her remarks was on the necessity of the shift from the old “management”  to the new “leadership” paradigm. According to the speaker, in order to educate leaders rather than managers, the following changes should be made in the educational system:

• creation of leadership profile
• fostering leadershipbehavioralcompetencies
• individualization of education
• new approach to student assessment

Recruitingright Educational personnel was called today’s biggest challenge on the way to success due to the fact that leaders can be only educated by the leaders, in Ms. Kalashnikova's opinion. Among other problems mentioned was the difficulty to implement “leadership” paradigm in Ukrainian educational system because of Ukrainian social and cultural context.

In the third part of the workshop the business game "GC Dilemmas"was presented by Ms. Anna Danylyuk,  Global Compact Network in Ukraine Coordinator, and Mr. Victor Kotusenko and Ms. Kateryna Batsenko from Kyiv-Mohyla Business School. Analyzing dilemmas concerning environmental protection, labour relations, anti-corruption  and human rights, participants had a great opportunity to understand the process of Global Compact’s Ten Principles practical application (implementation) in different business cases.  The sample of the game was presented to each participant of the workshop for further use in the academic environment. Lecturers provided a positive feedback on the use of the game, shared their readiness to use it while teaching CSR to students and offered to develop GC Dillemma game software to enrich the deposit of dilemmas and update them on a regular basis.