THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF BENTLEY UNIVERSITY SINCE 1963
THE VANGUARD THURSDAY, APRIL 16 2015
COMING SOON
THE VANGUARD/Usama Salim
VOLUME LVIII ISSUE VIII
Melissa Powell, Head of Strategy & Partnerships and Business for Peace at the UN Global Compact, speaks at Bentley about the new UN initiative.
Bentley hosts second Global Compact speaker
Melissa Powell outlines importance of business in peacemaking BY USAMA SALIM EDITOR IN CHIEF
On Tuesday, Bentley University had the opportunity to host another member of the United Nations Global Compact team thanks to the Center for Business Ethics. Melissa Powell, Head of Strategy & Partnerships and Business for Peace at the UN Global Compact, focused her talk around the topic of the relatively new initiative introduced into the corporate world -- Business for Peace. Ms. Powell, a graduate in politics and international relations from LSE and a former staff writer for Secretary General Kofi Annan, today runs the UN Global Compact’s Business for Peace initiative, and is an integral part of the Global Compact team. UN Global Compact, the over-arching initiative, was launched in 2000 under previous Secretary-General Kofi Annan, with the hope of initiating a partnership of shared values and principles between business and the United Nations, which would “give a human face to the global market.” The initiative that started out with 40 companies has grown drastically, and currently hous-
es over 8,000 companies in more than 160 countries, who have committed at their CEO level to the 10 principles of the Global Compact initiative. These principals have the companies working on tackling the issues of human rights, labor standards, the environment as well as corruption. The Business for Peace Initiative was launched by Secretary-General Ban Kimoon in September of 2013 in New York. The Initiative has a simple idea behind it; although peace and security lie within the realm of governments,, in order to build sustainable peace, security and development, you need all stakeholders engaged in the process. Companies, states Ms. Powell, have a real role to play in contributing to peace and many are taking concrete actions that are having a positive impact in the lives of the local communities where they operate. The initiative seeks to complement the governmental process and highlights the progress that can be made by engaging both the private and public sectors to address these issues together. The question is how to leverage business as a stakeholder in society to do things that business does
well, and at the same time, in so doing, make contributions to peace, but also help grow the bottom line. Not only that, but Ms. Powell states that “we’re also realizing that there is a lot that governments can learn from the kinds of policies companies have developed in their business as it relates to dealing with diversity issues in the work place for example. Companies are able to bring people together from differing cultural and religious backgrounds, to break-down barriers and to foster inter-cultural understand which can translate from the workplace into the local communities. ” So how can business contribute to peace? In an interview, Ms. Powell points to the efforts taken one of the UN Global Compact networks in Columbia. The group decided to look at the issue of ex-combatants and their reintegration in to society. The argument to be made is that how can the government turn these ex-combatants into every day working class people? The answer of course here is businesses. In the long run, businesses worked together with the government to provide training, so that training can match the job opportunities that open up.
Companies have been able to hire these individuals, helping to reduce social stigma and showing that they can become productive members of society. Business for Peace also encourages businesses to work together, better known as ‘collective action” to help contribute to solving some of the systemic changes that no one company could tackle alone. For example, the UN Global Compact has launched anti-corruption initiatives in India, Brazil and Egypt among others and have seen an anti-corruption “uprising” as businesses join hands to promise not to pay bribes and operate in a more ethical manner.. When asked about where do college students and higher education institutions fit into the process, Ms. Powell suggested that there was much more to be done in terms of research and analysis, which may possibly go out to college students (look out for internships!). She also stated that it was time to raise awareness in people’s minds about this intersection between business and society, and that there is a little bit more education and training on some of these issues which in the past were may-
be considered soft issues, but which at the end of the day can make it or break it for the business. There is an area for curriculum development that looks at studies of peace and looks at the benefits of peace rather than just the study of conflicts. Adding onto the conversation, Professor Robert McNulty, who has advocated for this “Business for Peace” ideology for quite some time, wants to help build the ideology of changing the way people think. To him, companies aren’t profit generators. Instead, he states, they are social entities, that as a bi-product of their socialism, create profit. The hope of these kinds of initiatives includes creating leaders that are as comfortable talking about business for peace just as they are comfortable with their reciting their respective trades, states Professor McNulty. With such as great cause and a great ideology, we hope that we continue to get great speakers such as Georg Kell as well as Melissa Powell to empower the students of tomorrow to take these initiatives and implement them as they take go out into the business world as business people.
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