FALL 2014

U P D AT E

Dear Friend of IGE—

I’m glad it’s once again time to reach out to you. Before I invite you to read all the exciting news in the following pages, I want to take a moment to say thank you. Every single one of you has the gratitude of myself, the Board, and the entire staff at IGE. Without your support through a challenging transitional period, you’d be receiving a very different update. Thanks to all of you I’ve got some great news to share.

It would be impossible to list every positive change we’ve made at IGE over the past six months, but in the following pages there are a few which neatly sum up how we’ve become a more agile, capable, and efficient organization.

But the most exciting part is that, even after all of that, we’re only getting started. As a result of your continued support and generosity, IGE has emerged as a stronger organization, led and staffed by a crew of people with endless passion, determination, and a commitment to the integrity and values upon which the organization was founded. Together, with your help, we will continue leading the march toward a more ethical global society, one small step at a time.

Sincerely yours,

Anthony J. Gray President and CEO

In late February, 2014, Anthony Gray served as a panelist at the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics’ Colloquium in Jack-sonville, Florida. As part of a discussion on “Key Challenges for Ethics Centers,” Gray discussed the lessons he’s learned over his years working in ethics with his fellow pan-elists, which included the executive directors of ethics centers at Santa Clara University, Rutgers University, the University of Illinois, and DePaul University.

In early spring of 2014, Gray met with Gretchen Winter, the Executive Director of the Center for Professional Responsibility in Business and Society at the University of Il-linois.  Leaders of both organizations see the

future as ripe for collaboration, as Winter’s center focuses on imparting solid principles of applied ethics to business students, while IGE’s training aims to reinforce those princi-ples within the corporate environment.

In June, 2014, Gray met with Patricia H. Wer-hane, the Wicklander Chair of Business Ethics and Managing Director of DePaul University’s Institute for Business and Professional Ethics.  The pair discussed how Werhane’s recent PBS documentary series, Big Questions, dovetails with IGE’s overarching mission of increasing awareness about ethical decision-making, and brainstormed ways in which a more ro-bust discussion of ethical issues can lead to a more educated and ethical public.  

IGE IN THE FIELD OF APPLIED ETHICS

THE JOHN TEMPLETON FOUNDATIONExploring the Role of Virtues in Determining Organizational Culture

In February, the Institute concluded a planning grant from the John Templeton Foundation to conduct research on cultures of integrity, to determine the role of virtues within organizations. Specifically, IGE asked: Are there core vir-tues critical to the ethical operation of an organization? And specifically, how do ethical values, or virtues, inform a culture of integrity? Where do they fit in?

Our experience researching three organizations—one each in the education, nonprofit, and for profit sectors—has shown us that ethical organizations build in processes and structures that translate values into organizational best practices. Particularly, these appear to include:

Leadership: Creating a sense of trust and openness

Mission: Being passionate about the work we do

Communications: Transparency, a willingness to listen and be heard

Collegiality: Working with others who care, teamwork Ethical organizations build in processes and structures that translate values into organizational best practices.

“We began this research with a culture of integrity model in mind. The model was constructed from the role values play in making decisions and taking action,” reflects Pat Smith, a recently retired IGE senior staff member. “What we found during our field research, however, is that our initially proposed model is too narrow. While virtues are central to developing a culture of integrity, structures and processes are required to put values into play at the orga-nizational level.” The Institute looks forward to continuing the exploration of role of values in organizational culture.

DEVELOPING STUDENT CHARACTER THROUGH SOCIAL ACTION AND SERVICE

In April of 2014, Anthony Gray, along with Amber Kruk, a Trainer and Senior Project Manager at IGE, worked with a team of administrators and teacher leaders at Hoboken, NJ’s All Saints Episcopal Day School to identify their core ethical values, consider ethical di-lemmas, and begin to consider new ways to implement ethics across their curriculum.

One participant said, “I think this seminar was a won-derful way for us to launch into ideas of what we can do to support ethical fitness in our classrooms.”

To build on momentum established at the training, Gray returned to All Saints in May. In the course of his visit, Gray attended a blessing of the animals, visited many of the school’s classrooms, and met with school admin-istrators about potential avenues for future collaboration in ethics training and discussion.

TOUGH CHOICES IN PUBLIC SERVICEIn early May, IGE Master Trainer Martin Taylor facilitated back-to-back Ethical Fitness® Seminars for the staff and commissioners of Maine’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC). While PUC attorneys attend annual ethics training, the Commission felt it was important to include all of its employees in the training.

IGE’s goal was to provide the PUC staff with IGE’s unrivaled tools and techniques for thinking through those tough decisions where laws and standards do not readily exist or do not provide a clear answer for what to do.

In July, Amber Kruk facilitated an Ethical Fitness® Seminar for key staff at Open Door Family Medical Centers (www.opendoormedical.org) at their Ossining, NY location.

Open Door Family Medical Centers exemplifies a culture based on stan-dards of integrity. IGE’s goal was to provide a common language which staff could use to forward conversations about continual improvement.

Grace Beltran, Marketing Manager at Open Door expressed what was most valuable to her from the training was seeing that, “Ethics aren’t so cut and dry. There are grey areas and often the best solution lies in the grey areas.”

BUILDING STRONG, HEALTHY COMMUNITIES

AT OPEN DOOR

In early June IGE took a historic step in its evolution when IGE’s Board of Directors met for the first time in the Institute’s new home base of Madison, WI.

Along with discussing a litany of bold initiatives and reviewing the recent successful restructuring ef-forts, the Board had the opportunity to tour Madison for the first time, experiencing the culture, business environment, and atmosphere of innovation which make the city the perfect center for IGE’s operations.

IGE IN MADISON, WISCONSIN

On May 27–29 IGE held an Ethical Fitness® Train-the-Trainer Workshop which was hosted at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery where Anthony Gray holds an academic appointment as a distin-guished scholar. Participants are now certified by the Institute to deliver the Ethical Fitness seminar.

The workshop was facilitated by Martin Taylor. Taylor began directing the Ethical Fitness Seminar program in 1994, and, even after twenty years of seminar groups, he remains “intrigued by the pow-er of the seminar, gratified by its results, and still surprised by its long-lasting effects.”

Anthony Gray was recently featured on Education Roundtable, a public-television show in Princeton, NJ, hosted by Aggie Sung Tang. The show has been providing a public forum for discussion of issues in education for two years, and was syndicated in May this year.

Gray spent much of the thirty-minute interview discussing some of the issues raised by standardized testing, including the divide between theory and practice, the danger of teaching to the test, and the tendency of such systems to reinforce existing socioeconomic disparities.

IGE AT THE EDUCATION

ROUNDTABLE

IGE PROUDLY PRESENTS A NEW PUBLIC FACE

In June the Institute for Global Ethics unveiled a new brand identity, symbolized by the introduction of a new logo and a newly designed website that shows the growth and transformation of IGE since June 2013 when Anthony Gray joined the IGE team as President and CEO.

The launch of IGE’s new website and logo represents IGE’s commitment to increase its brand awareness and the value of its services in the markets it serves. See the new website at www.globalethics.org.

IGE RETURNS TO CAMDEN, MAINE

Starting in September you will be able to find members of IGE’s Maine staff at IGE’s new office located in Camden, Maine.

This relocation marks a coming home of sorts as Camden was the original home of the Institute until offices were moved in 2008 to Rockland, Maine and then subsequently to Rockport, Maine.

Mail and packages can now be sent to our new address of 43 Mechanic Street, Suite 7, Camden, Maine, 04843. We invite you to stop by and visit us the next time you are in the area.

Promoting ethical action in a global context.

43 Mechanic Street, Suite 7 Camden, ME 04843

NONPROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE

PAID ROCKPORT, ME PERMIT NO. 102