Acknowledgements

Publication of this book has been possible due to the contributions of innumerable people to whom I am greatly indebted. First and foremost, I am obliged to Rev. Dr P. Christie, S. J., Director, Loyola Institute of Business Administration (LIBA), Chennai, who spent a considerable amount of resources, both in terms of time and money to organize Beacon 2007, the first ever international conference on business ethics, corporate governance and corporate social responsibility by any B-school in India. I am also grateful to him for according me permission to initiate measures to edit the book and get it published. I wish to acknowledge the contribution of my friend and colleague, Prof. K. Jayaram, the guiding spirit behind the conference. I am grateful to Luis D'Souza, the then senior PGDM scholar at LIBA, who, as a speaker co-ordinator, single-handedly arranged for a galaxy of eminent personalities to speak at the conference and in the process spent two months of stressful days and sleepless nights. There were other senior students like Bonny Avanoor, conference secretary, Akshay Dugar and Jonita D'Souza, sponsorship co-ordinators, Ruvita Chacko and Dhananjay Vidyasagar who looked after hospitality, Abner Paul Noronha and Abhishek Batra, incharge of public relations, Ruchir Agrawal and Sushil Raka, who handled technical matters and logistics, and a host of others who deserve to be thanked for their help in organizing the conference and making it a splendid success that it was. There were so many individuals who offered to help and the space we have is so limited that I find it difficult to name all of them. Suffice it to say, I am grateful to all of them. There was another set of students like Paul and his team who need to be praised for having commendably done a very strenuous and hazardous task of transcribing the recorded speeches with a great degree of success.

I am thankful to the following eminent personalities for having consented to participate in the conference, speaking and also for giving us the permission to include their contributions in this book: M. Damodaran, IAS, the then chairman, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), who gave a never-to-be-forgotten keynote address; Dr J. J. Irani, Director, Tata Sons, who delivered the special address on corporate governance; M. S. Sundara Rajan, the then executive director, Indian Bank and Arindam Banerrji, Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer, Deutsche Bank Operations International, both of whom spoke on ethical challenges in the financial sector; D. P. Padmanabhan, Managing Director, Eurocon Tiles; Ramanujam Sridhar, Chief Executive Officer, Brand-Comm and Krishna Mohan, President, Ogilvy & Mather, all of whom spoke on different aspects of ethical challenges in marketing; Dr Luc Van Lie-dekerke, President, European Business Ethics Network (EBEN), Belgium; Rev. Dr James J. Spillane, S. J., Sanata Dharma University, Indonesia; and David T. Hopper, the then consul general, US Consulate, Chennai, all of whom talked about the ethical challenges in business from a global perspective; Yoshiaki Kodaki, the then Consul General, Japanese Consulate, Chennai; Venkat Chan-gavalli, Chief Executive Officer, Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI) and J. Mohapatra, Executive Director, National Thermal Power Corporation Ltd (NTPC), all of whom talked on the topic ‘corporate social responsibility: a competitive tool for corporate excellence’ both M. A. Alagap-pan, Executive Chairman, Murugappa Group, and S. B. Mathur, Chairman, National Stock Exchange (NSE) spoke on the topic ‘corporate governance: precepts and practices’. The speakers for the session Issues and Challenges of Corporate Governance in India were Dr Madhav Mehra, President, World Council for Corporate Governance, London and P. Shankar, IAS (retd.), former Central Vigilance Commissioner, Government of India. I am thankful to all of them.

I am also obliged to acknowledge the help rendered by my learned colleagues who chaired the sessions at the conference: Dr M. Victor Louis Anthuvan and Dr U. Srinivasa Raghavan. We also had the privilege of P. Murari, IAS (retd.), advisor to president of FICCI and former secretary to president of India; R. Ramamurthy, Convenor, CSR Panel, FICCI, Tamil Nadu; R. Ramaraj, former Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Sify Ltd., and G. V. Ramakrishna, IAS (retd.), former Chairman, SEBI and Disinvestment Commission, Government of India, chairing different sessions at the conference. I am very grateful to them for the time they took off their busy schedules and for being with us and sharing the experience. I wish to place on record my special thanks to Rev. Dr John Alexander, SDB, Assistant Professor, Business Ethics and CSR for speaking on the conference dynamics, as a sort of curtain raiser to the conference.

Further, I am thankful to K. P. R. Nair, Anindita Pandey, Ashish Alexander and Raza Khan of Pearson Education for the keen interest they took in bringing out the book.

Last, but not the least, I am thankful to Maria Matthews and Felix Gerald Henry, senior PGDM students of LIBA for helping me correspond with the speakers and publishers and for providing secretarial assistance.