Ethics in business – illusion or source of strength was the theme of a three day seminar, 13-16 February at the St Petersburg University, Faculty of Philosophy and Political Science, Ethics Department.

St Petersburg

In July 2007 Dr Vadim Perov, Department Director, along with eight other scholars from the university, attended the Servant Community – Values, Responsibility and Leadership conference at the IofC conference centre in Caux, Switzerland. Inspired by this he invited Paul Gundersen, a Finnish businessman with long experience of applying the ideas of IofC in professional life, and two other Finns with similar experience, Pedrtti Kajanne and Heikki Lampela, to speak at the university. As he explained to Gundersen, although their academic courses in ethics were very thorough, they lacked experience of applying ethics in contemporary business life.

The seminar was attended by 100 participants, including six professors and representatives of two other St Petersburg universities. In his opening address Dr Perov referred to the Finns' long experience of international business and stressed the need to understand the meaning of ethics in real life. Debates on corruption in the press in recent weeks and speeches by the Russian President and the Prime Minister illustrated the relevance of the subject.

Themes covered included 'Winning a battle - losing the war', 'Ethics and our purpose in life', 'Following rules or a way of life'. The seminar ended with a vigorous round table session with so many questions and comments that at one point eight people were talking all at once. A director of another university expressed his wish to have a similar event in his institution. Perov concluded the seminar by stressing that ethics is essentially the very art of life. Two days later the senior student who had translated for the Finns emailed Gundersen to say 'these meetings were of great importance not only for your audience but for me personally.'