Overview

The Kemper Foundation has provided the funds to create a series of seminars at Elmhurst College that has helped to establish the Institute for Business Ethics at Elmhurst College. These seminars and the Institute (henceforth IBE) were designed by the special cooperation of Elmhurst College's Center for Business and Economics, Center for Professional Excellence and Department of Philosophy, and have specific and critical theoretical and practical ends in view.

These seminars and Institute are designed to ethically enlighten two specific professional communities: the academic and corporate. Thereby it is also hoped that the practical results and methodology of these seminars and the IBE can become useful as a model of ethical development for the professional community in general and for the public at large.

The seminars seek to accomplish the following objectives:

1. Time for self reflection concerning personal ethics and a written statement thereof;
2. a rigorous analysis of decision making procedures and the language of ethical discussion;
3. concrete procedures for the internal ethical audit;
4. concrete procedures for the social responsibility audit;
5. a concrete knowledge of character analysis and character development;
6. concrete knowledge of case study analysis;
7. a broader knowledge of professionalism and ethical leadership, and a more concrete idea of cross-professional ethical dilemmas and methods for resolutions.

The IBE will accomplish the above by facilitating and hosting intensive and interactive weekend seminars on the campus of Elmhurst College to explore ethics and social responsibility. For a total of three days distributed over two weekends, five senior faculty members, five corporate heads and three seminar facilitators (hereafter called Kemper Foundation Scholars) will combine their backgrounds, experience and skill-sets while giving them many opportunities to discuss, develop and defend their personal and professional ethical beliefs. They will form a cohort in search of a "best practices" approach to ethical problem solving at the leadership level. Successful results and the methodology of the seminars themselves can become a model of ethical development and can be carried into other ethical dilemmas in other areas of social concern. Scholars also will get the rare opportunity to reflect upon how they reach ethical solutions in their personal and professional lives and become exposed to the reflections of the other scholars in the seminars.