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4.	Managing Ethics in Institutions
	When an established institution like the World Bank, takes on the ethical and spiritual concerns of a small group of its staff, it is worth taking note. As a result, the Bank held a conference on spirituality and SD in October 1995. The conference conclusion? “Values lie at the very heart of our behaviour and…SD will occur only when we have belief systems that respect all life, assign priority to the common good, engender responsibility for the whole, promote equality, and support unconditional caring, – " the conference proceedings proclaim. In the last few years, the Academy of Management Journal has also published a clarion call to the wider management community to embrace ‘sustain-centrism’, or sustainable development thinking in order to heal a “fractured epistemology, which separates humanity from nature and truth from morality”. The authors call for a new management ethic in which progress is routinely measured against the wider global mission of sustainable development. If the rapid growth in the field of ethical and socially-responsible investing is anything to go by, the SD spirit could be catching on in the corporate world. Back at the World Bank, membership in the spiritually-concerned staff group, the Spiritual Unfoldment Society, grew from 25 to 340 members between March 1993 and July 1995 and is continuing to show strong growth. Richard Barrett, the group’s founder, was subsequently appointed ‘values co-ordinator’ at the Bank, a position in which he sought to bring his colleagues’ belief systems and ethics more in line with SD goals, and to tailor development projects to the cultures of developing societies. This July, Barrett went solo as a ‘corporate culture consultant’, hoping to promote ethical behaviour in the private sector much as he has done in the aid community. Barrett should be proud of his legacy to date – not just with the Spiritual Unfoldment Society, but with a new emphasis on values in the World Bank’s own policies. Among the changes at the Bank: fifty ‘values behaviour’ trainers have now been trained; the human resources VP has now taken over Barrett’s work and the Bank’s VPs are developing an explicit set of values for the whole organisation. There is also a new emphasis on ‘people skills’ and a caring management style. In keeping with the spirit of practising what you preach, it will be interesting to see the outcome. If other organisations can now follow in the Bank’s first footsteps, institutional values could become a major force for promoting SD in the future. [explicit recognition of the importance of ethics in institutional management]
	sin stocks n. term used by the Franklin Development Center meaning holdings in companies engaged in irresponsible business practices or the production of harmful products. shareholder activism n. influencing corporate policy through shareholder pressure.
	Gladwin, Thomas N. et al. Shifting Paradigms for Sustainable Development: Implications for Management Theory and Research. Academy of Management Journal 20 Oct.1,1995: 874-907. Barrett, Richard. A Guide to Liberating Your Soul. Alexandria, Va: Fulfilling Books, 1995. 157p. Watch for his new book. Liberating the Corporate Soul: A values-driven approach to organizational transformation, in early 1998.
Virtual Ide	GreenMoney Online Guide Richard Barrett interview on Spiritual Unfoldment Discover ‘mature’ management at the 2nd International Congress on Sustainable Management, September 18-20, 1997 in Colombia