For Europeans born in the 1960’s, the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and all the events associated with the crumbling of the power of the Soviet Union, must rank among the most memorable events of our lifetimes. The Polish Solidarity movement had been bravely standing up to oppression for nearly...
Businesses are made up of people and things (money, capital equipment, assets in general), and are organised according to certain legal forms and principles. Human ingenuity has arrived at this combination of elements in order to achieve certain goals. As such, business structures represent a combination of natural and artificial...
Quando termina un periodo di tempo ben definito, come un secolo ad esempio, è naturale tracciare un riassunto dei traguardi raggiunti in quel periodo. Operazione che, pur nella dovuta serietà dell’analisi del passato, ha anche un grande valore come programmazione dell’azione futura. Ogni sguardo valutativo di quello che si è...
Il 3 giugno 2007 cadeva a Bologna il 750° anniversario della pubblicazione del Liber Paradisus, un documento che proclamava la libertà dei servi di gleba nel comune di Bologna, elencando i circa sei mila nomi delle persona liberate, quanto pagato dal comune per la loro liberazione (la stessa somma pagata...
There is no doubt that the idea of the stakeholder has come of age. We are all stakeholders now, wherever we are and whatever group we are a part of. The positive aspects of this development should be underlined, I think. I just give one example here: at least where...
In the English-speaking world of today, the word “corporation” is mostly used in the US, or in places influenced by US terminology, to describe businesses that have been “incorporated” and benefit from limited liability. In general discussion, the word tends to be associated with bigger, or at least medium-sized, businesses...
On its January 2005 cover, The Economist showed the picture of a white company headquarters with a pair of angels’ wings on either side, casting a shadow behind with devils’ horns. The title on the cover said it all: “The Good Company: A Sceptical Look at Corporate Social Responsibility”. For...
“Make Poverty History” has been a massive campaign this year in the UK, aimed at influencing the G8 meeting in Scotland. This is also the year of the first major stocktaking of progress towards the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) since the year 2000. Poverty, especially in Africa, has thus been...
Gaudium et Spes was a path – breaking document when it was published forty years ago, so it is not surprising that it still inspires interest and comment. When a “Call for Papers” went out about a year ago for a conference organised in Rome in March 2005 by a...
One of the more striking statements from the recent social teaching of the Church forms the title of this editorial. It comes from the end of chapter IV of Centesimus annus, produced on the 100th anniversary of the publication of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum: The Church has no models to...
