Ethical Reading
No, this is not about reading books on ethics but about an event hosted by an interesting new social enterprise based in Reading, Berkshire: the event was on 31st October.
Its roots can be traced back to Grant Thornton’s Future Perspectives project which SAMI Consulting helped them with. This led to the new CEO, Sacha Romanovitch, developing the Vibrant Economy England initiative. One of the local meetings Live Labs held to support this by bringing together local leaders was in Reading, and Jim Bignal took up the challenge to action, founding Ethical Reading.
The purpose of Ethical Reading is to help and encourage organisations and individuals to become more ethical in their behaviour with respect to society, organisations and the wider common good. In short, to make Reading a better place to live and work by encouraging this positive change. The challenges of Reading – in terms of creating a diverse community with ethics spanning cultures – are a microcosm of the world today.
There are three core aims of Ethical Reading – to Inspire, Educate and Collaborate. To educate, we are working with universities, to collaborate we are working with local business. The event on 31st October is part of the Inspire stream – to provide a meet-up for people who believe that ethics is a key Factor in enabling 10bn of us to live on one planet.
I decided to accept Jim’s invitation to become a Director of Ethical Reading after working with Professor Paul Moxey – a SAMI Fellow – on the future of governance. As it became clear that culture was more important than regulation in creating an ethical working environment, and meeting the needs of real people, a forum for developing these ideas and facilitating their spread is clearly timely. In the longer term, we can envision an ecosystem of Ethical Cities globally.
On 31st October, Ethica hosted the first of a series of meet-ups, providing a forum for discussing current ethical issues and for people to find those of like mind at the Great Expectations Hotel in Reading from 6:30 to 8:30 pm. The topic was “Are CEOs paid too much” in conjunction with the Living Wage Foundation. Ethical Reading’s web site is at www.ethicalreading.org.uk
Written by Gill Ringland, SAMI Emeritus Fellow.
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily of SAMI Consulting.
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