Activities and Programs
The Center's activities consist of six main components:
Monthly luncheons are offered to the regional area with members coming from various types of organizations, professional disciplines and the academic community. These luncheons are usually held at Concordia College in Birkeland Alumni Lounge, located off of the Offutt Concourse of the Olson Forum. Invited speakers discuss leadership and ethical issues important to organizations. The luncheons also serve as a center for dialogue for our membership.
Luncheon topics in the past have dealt with values and leadership, servant leadership, integrating values into organizations, international ethics, rethinking work, developing emotional intelligence, legal and ethical issues in managing workers, ethics in political campaigns, ethics and the drug companies and ethics in health care.
Fall Leadership Workshop
The Center sponsors a fall workshop dealing with a specific area of leadership. The purpose of this workshop is to provide an in-depth learning experience related to leadership development. The seminars are kept small to provide individual learning and dialogue.
Workshops have been conducted on servant leadership (using presenters from the Greenleaf Center of Servant-Leadership), leadership and emotional intelligence (presented by Eide Bailly), and leadership and ethical policies (presented by Marianne Jennings, business ethicist).
Norman M. Lorentzsen Ethics Conference
Each academic year, the Center sponsors a conference related to ethical leadership. This usually involves one or more nationally recognized leaders in organizational ethics and leadership. The conference consists of seminars, a keynote luncheon by a speaker and involvement in campus activities by the visiting presenter.
In the past three years, visiting speakers James Autry (author and speaker) discussed caring leadership; Marianne Jennings (author, speaker) discussed ethical dilemmas of corporations, and Alfred Tauber, M.D. and David Durenberger, J.D., presented a conference on ethics in health care. Each year, the conference is funded by the Norman M. Lorentzsen Endowed Ethics Fund.
Seminars and Consulting for Organizations
Seminars on ethics-centered and valued-based leadership are conducted for business and community groups. Customized programs to meet the particular needs of individuals and organizations are designed to enhance individual skills, encourage ethical decision-making, develop communication and teamwork and improve overall organizational performance.
Programs that have been presented and are available include leadership seminars, introductions to ethics, managing for organizational integrity, philosophical approaches to business ethics and models for ethical decision-making.
Integration of Ethics into the Business Curriculum
Values and ethical behavior are central to Concordia College's mission. A concerted effort is made by the Department of Business, Accounting and Economics to raise students' awareness of ethical issues within their discipline, to encourage them to come to grips with their own values, and to recognize the kinds of issues they will encounter in their emerging careers.
Ethics is integrated into the department curriculum in various ways by including specific units on ethics within each course, offering business ethics courses, sponsoring special ethics programs for students, and by students attending programs sponsored by the Center.
Academic and Research Development
The center maintains a library of videos and books on organizational ethics. The Center has access to experts and specialists from the academic, business and professional communities.
The Center has developed research in the area of ethics surveys and has assessed several organizations using questionnaires and followed up with consultation and workshops. The center has also presented research papers in the area of case study teaching in ethics and in managerial decision-making related to ethics.