Category: Events

Please join us for a special Zoom round table at 9:00 am (CST) on Thursday, December 9, with our colleague, Klaus Leisinger, on the release of his new book, Integrity in Business and Society.

Today, every self-respecting company has a mission statement assuring that the integrity of its actions is one of its highest values. Nevertheless, the limits of legality are often tested in everyday life, “service by the book” is merely provided in the environmental area, although proactive action would be necessary and inhumane working conditions are made possible, again and again, with legal tricks.

How can this be? Are these one-off lapses on the part of individual managers and thus, the exception to an otherwise upright rule? In this book, Klaus Leisinger shows that integrity is, above all, a personal responsibility: Integre leaders look closely, act to the best of their knowledge and conscience and lead by example. When they make promises, they keep them. When they make mistakes, they stand up for them and correct them. They motivate the people working in the company through fairness and recognition and convey to them that they are part of something they can stand up for with pride. With a minimum of academic theory, the author presents practical insights and tools that help deal with moral dilemmas in everyday business life and develop solutions based on universally valid values.

To register, please click here.

This is the second in a series of Zoom round table events with authors, business leaders and think tank leaders.

The event is free and will last about an hour.

With sustainability, climate change and asking that companies have a “purpose,” which is not simply the making of profits, the narratives of ethics and morality predominate in many discussions of capitalism.

Yet, is it not true that systems are complex and multiple action domains each contribute separately to the outcomes, whatever they may be?

It would be salutary, therefore, to bring into our considerations of capitalist enterprise economics. The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) concentrates on economic realities and thinking. They see themselves in the intellectual tradition of Frederic Bastiat, who noticed the power of “opportunity cost” in our thinking about prices and spending.

At 9:00 am (CST) on Thursday, December 2, we invite you to join us in a webinar over Zoom to learn more about AIER from Brad DeVos, its interim President.

Brad DeVos joined AIER in 2017. He earned a B.S. in economics and a B.A. in urban studies from the College of Charleston, as well as an associates degree in computer aided design and drafting. Brad is a member of the historic Mont Pelerin Society, a L.E.E.D. Accredited Professional, a graduate of the Atlas Think Tank Leadership Academy and a member of the Foundation for Economic Education’s Faculty Network.
Through the Bastiat Society program, AIER makes the ideas that enable peaceful trade and human flourishing available to the everyday business person. They are the only international network of business people committed to advancing peaceful trade and human flourishing.

AIER’s Bastiat Society is geared for the business community—a highly leveraged, influential, and engaged audience. Apart from being active in the society, their members and attendees are also involved in various local issues, civic groups, trade associations and fraternal organizations.

The problem is—of all potential audiences for academic ideas—the business community is among the hardest to reach. They have companies to run, employees to take care of and families who deserve their attention.

The typical business person has limited spare time and is reluctant to take on additional commitments. Yet, these people also have the most to lose if capitalism is undermined and economic freedom is replaced by central planning and more government intervention.

The event is free and will last about an hour.

Please register here.

The Zoom link will be emailed to registrants the day before the event.

Steve Young, Global Executive Director of the Caux Round Table, will moderate.

To learn more about AIER, please visit their website at: www.aier.org

Inflation worries are in the news.  The rise in financial asset prices continues willy-nilly.  Bernie Sanders wants more taxes on the rich and transfer of money to the poor and nearly poor.  The gap between those with access to money and the middle class grows wider and wider.  Middle incomes, in real terms, have stagnated since 1973.

The interconnections between finance and capitalism – the money economy and the real economy – are complex and legendary.  Marx, Keynes and Milton Friedman all had strong opinions about how finance does or does not contribute to a good and a responsible capitalism.

The topic is so important that we should not turn aside from seeking to learn more about what finance is doing to our economies in our time.

Please join us for an in-person round table on the financialization of everything at 9:00 am on Tuesday, October 26, at Landmark Center in St. Paul.

We are very pleased to provide a meeting space at Landmark Center to continue its tradition of public service and to share with the community its spacious rooms and architecture of distinction.  In Landmark, one can experience the contributions of design to our self-regard and our feelings of citizenship, as being part of something larger and worthy of note.

Registration and a light breakfast will begin at 8:30 am.

The cost to attend is $10.00 per person.

Space is limited.

For more information or to register, please email Jed at jed@cauxroundtable.net.

The event will last about 2 hours.

As we Americans recover from the “withdrawal” from Afghanistan and the 2022 election campaign for control of the House and Senate begins a bit earlier than usual, we seem as divided into different subjective epistemological and emotional living spaces as ever.  Each of us has seemingly been anointed as a truth bearer.

Whoever is not for us is against us.  The enemy of my enemy may be my friend.  What does not fit is misinformation or disinformation.  No one can be trusted, except fellow true believers.

So, who needs journalism anyway?  Or rather, what does journalism have to do with our truth?

There are media companies, private businesses selling information and entertainment to paying customers.  But are they in the business of journalism?

As private companies, they presumably come within the compass of business ethics pointing to their true north.  Under the principles of moral capitalism, they have stakeholders to consider.  But in what order of priority?  Owners first or the common good first?  Where does hucksterism end and citizenship begin?

The Caux Round Table has proposed a code of ethical conduct for persons working in journalism, which you can read here.

Please join us for an in-person round table on the ethics of journalism at 9:00 am on Tuesday, September 28, at Landmark Center.

We are very pleased to provide a meeting space at Landmark Center to continue its tradition of public service and to share with the community its spacious rooms and architecture of distinction.  In Landmark, one can experience the contributions of design to our self-regard and our feelings of citizenship, as being part of something larger and worthy of note.

Registration and a light breakfast will begin at 8:30 am.

The cost to attend is $10.00 per person.

Space is limited to 24 attendees.

To register, please email Jed at jed@cauxroundtable.net.

Due to the Delta variant, the building is requiring face coverings for all who enter.

The event will last about 2 hours.

There is a new book out on Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. From a review, it seems the book takes a dystopian view of what Zuckerberg created with his social media platform.

The first reaction to social media was, as I recall, enthusiastic – taking participatory culture and politics to the masses for a flowering of human creativity and fulfillment at personal and community levels.

Then, second thoughts came upon us.

Now, we wallow in anxiety over misinformation, disinformation, wasted hours, personality distortions, cancel culture, ad hominem attacks in place of reasoned arguments, emotions crowding out goodwill, the rise of Trump, the evaporation of the habit of reading and learning how to think well, etc.

The Caux Round Table has proposed a code of ethics for users of social media, which you can view here.

Please join us to discuss this code and social media in general at 9:00 am on Tuesday, August 31, at Landmark Center.

Registration and a light breakfast will begin at 8:30 am.

The cost to attend is $10.00 per person.

Space is limited to 25 attendees.

To register, please email Jed at jed@cauxroundtable.net.

As of now, due to the Delta variant, the building is requiring face coverings for all who enter.

The event will last about 2 hours.

With record high temperatures in many places, including in our northwestern states and news reports of placing reflective plastic sheeting on Alpine glaciers, what are we to make of global warming?

What data is most probative? What technologies might slow or reduce climate change – wind and solar, carbon capture, nuclear fusion, more efficient engines, huge batteries, a carbon tax? Who will pay for changing our ways of generating electricity and acquiring new technologies – consumers, owners or taxpayers?

In particular, are there Caux Round Table principles which when applied to businesses, governments and individuals, would provide action agendas as moral imperatives?

Your insights, concerns and recommendations on these and related questions are most timely.

Please join us at 9:00 am on Tuesday, July 27, at Landmark Center to discuss.

Registration and a light breakfast will begin at 8:30 am.

The cost to attend is $10.00 per person.

Space is limited to 25 attendees.

To register, please email Jed at jed@cauxroundtable.net.

The event will last about 2 hours.

What is “infrastructure?” What are its social benefits? What should it cost? Are social and human capitals part of a society’s “infrastructure?”

With Senator Joe Manchin yesterday declaring his principled opposition to one party hegemony in a constitutional democracy, which respects minority opinion, President Biden will now have greater difficulty getting his plans for spending trillions on “infrastructure” approved by the Congress.

President Biden’s proposed spending on “infrastructure” raises, yet again, the institutional question of where is the sweet spot for optimal symbiosis between free market decision-making and government provision of public goods via regulation or rent transfers?

What are “public goods” anyway? How valuable are they?

From the Caux Round Table perspective of moral capitalism, getting the definition of “infrastructure” seems basic to system optimization of both capitalism and stakeholder outcomes.

Please join us for an in-person celebration of the ending of the pandemic round table discussion on “infrastructure” at 9:00 am on Tuesday, June 29, at the Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul.

Cost to attend is $10.00 per person.

Participation will be limited to the first 20 registrants.

To register, please email Jed at jed@cauxroundtable.net.

The event will last about two hours.

I am keeping a folder of clippings on the realities of the FANGS – concentrated market power in sectors of popular education, civics, character formation, family dynamics, consumerism, entertainment and shaping the zeitgeist of our country.

There is a book on surveillance capitalism – is privacy out of date in an age when others can judge our words and our beliefs to prevent us from causing hurt?

Our Senator, Amy Klobuchar, has a book just out on antitrust.  Is censoring Donald Trump a proper use of monopoly power?  What about the 1876 Supreme Court case of Munn v. Illinois, which ruled in the case of a cartel of grain elevator owners in Chicago that voluntarily acquiring market power makes one a custodian with obligations to use that power with abuse?

Please join us for a local Zoom round table on high tech and moral capitalism at 9:00 am on Thursday, May 27.

The event is limited to 25 attendees.

To register, please email Jed at jed@cauxroundtable.net.

The discussion will last about an hour and a half.

Well, it’s been one year since corona viruses hit our shores and what have we learned? What role has capitalism played and what role government? Are vaccines private or public goods? What about the right to a good education? What has trillions added to our liquidity done to reduce the wealth gap between the top 10% and the rest of us?

Please join us at 9:00 am on Thursday, April 8 at Landmark Center for an in-person round table, sort of a return to normal, to bring collective wisdom to bear on these questions and more.

Cost to attend is $10 per person.

Due to the Center’s virus restrictions, we’re limited to 14 total attendees. Face masks and social distancing must also be observed.

To register, please email Jed at jed@cauxroundtable.net.

The globally recognized 1994 Caux Round Table (CRT) ethical Principles for Business reflect the special legacy of Minnesota business leadership in seeking success through service to community and stakeholders. This remarkable legacy was epitomized by the Dayton Family – founders and owners of Dayton’s Department Store and Target Corporation, generous benefactors of the arts and community organizations.

To recognize the continuing importance of socially responsible leadership, the CRT annually recognizes executives who have distinguished themselves and their organizations in service to community.

Please join us online at 1:00 pm (CST) on Thursday, March 25 as we recognize Andrew Cecere, Chairman, President and CEO of U.S. Bancorp, for his determined engagement on behalf of the homeless to provide them with new facilities for shelter and meals.

The CRT will also recognize Don Samuels, CEO, MicroGrants, and Sondra Samuels, President and CEO, Northside Achievement Zone, for their perseverance in opening economic opportunities for citizens of north Minneapolis.

Thirdly, the CRT will commemorate the leadership of James Ford Bell, the Founder and CEO of what is now General Mills, after World War I in mobilizing Americans in agricultural enterprises to provide food for the hunger in Europe.

Agenda

• Welcome: Stephen Young, Global Executive Director, CRT
• Presentation of Award to Andrew Cecere: Brad Anderson, Chairman, CRT; former CEO, Best Buy
• Remarks: Andrew Cecere, Chairman, President and CEO, U.S. Bancorp
• Remarks: Cardinal Peter Turkson
• Presentation of Award to Don Samuels and Sondra Samuels: Brad Anderson, Chairman, CRT; former CEO, Best Buy
• Remarks: Don Samuels, CEO, MicroGrants
• Remarks: Sondra Samuels, President and CEO, Northside Achievement Zone
• Remarks: Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, Founding and Managing Partner, Inclusive Capitalism
• Retrospective Award to James Ford Bell: Mark Ritchie, President, Global Minnesota, and Jeff Harmening, President and CEO, General Mills
• Closing Remarks: Stephen Young, Global Executive Director, CRT

In particular, the Dayton Awards seek to dramatize leadership capacities of vision and prudence.

In 1994, at the initiative of several senior Minnesota business executives, the CRT published the first set of global ethical principles for business in Caux, Switzerland. Those principles then inspired the United Nations Global Compact. The CRT principles have informed the growing global movement for corporate social responsibility, which provides a road map for a more moral capitalism.

There are essential abilities required to lead – integrity, courage, compassion, respect and responsibility:

Integrity is being honest and having strong moral principles. Having integrity means you are true to yourself and would do nothing that demeans or dishonors you. Integrity makes you believable, as you know and act on your values.

Courage is strength in the face of adversity and upholding what is right, regardless of what others may think or do. Courage enables you to take a stand, honor commitments and guide the way. Courage is a necessary element of responsibility.

Compassion is having concern for another. It is feeling for and not feeling with the other. Compassion is concern of others in a more global sense.

Respect is a feeling of deep admiration for someone. Leaders ought to be respected and they ought to respect those with whom they work. Demonstrating this perspective is essential to motivate and inspire others.

Responsibility is acting on commitment, will, determination and obligation. Responsibility implies the satisfactory performance of duties, the adequate discharge of obligations and the trustworthy care for or disposition of possessions. It is being willing and able to act in a life-enhancing manner. Responsibility is expected of self, as well as from others.

To register, please click here.

Again, this online event will be taking place at 1:00 pm (CST) on Thursday, March 25.