The Dalai Lama's visit stirred up number of people: Australian politicians, Chinese politicians, Christians and there were some business people in the mix as well. His ethical proposals, which some commentators say “are nothing new”, are even more important for that. Granted His Holiness has had a lot of experience dealing with the West and with people from a wide variety of backgrounds, anyone, in short, who might be sympathetic to Tibetan autonomy, he remains a Buddhist and deeply a product of his non-western culture. Yet, his description of the practical ethical challenges which face, not just the West, but the entire world chime well with what many interested in organisational dynamics and their ethics have been saying.

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SAI Global have announced their 19th Annual Australian Global Business Awards. Businesses from all entities: local government, not-for-profits, small to large listed companies may compete for the awards and they are judged on a number of organisational benchmarks against global standards. The Sydney Catholic Education Office won a bronze award.

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The future holds some uncertain prospects for generations to come. Many are becoming more and more aware that human, specifically business, activities not only affect those around us, but also many people who live far away. As the connections of global commerce become more generally known, consumers in Europe, the US and even Australia are taking more and more seriously their role in the creation of sweat-shops and child labour and respond by asking questions about the provenance of the goods they buy. The shaming of companies like Nike in this respect has spawned a variety of responses from businesses from deep reform to shallow window-dressing.

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The term “price gouging” is not very clearly defined. Fundamentally it means that the speaker thinks that someone else is charging unfairly high prices, by whatever criterion they may think be “fair”. The accusations are freely being thrown the petrol companies' way at the moment. Conversations about such matters often suffer from the looseness of the term and from its dependence on the “eye of the beholder”.

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Queensland University of Technology has just suspended Drs. Gary MacLennan and John Hookham after they criticised their colleagues in The Australian.
John Sweeney

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