iBiZ2008 Purpose and Subjects of the Workshop
This workshop is part of a series of international conferences organized by the Open Research Center project at the Graduate School of International Management (GSIM) of the Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan. As the title indicates, this is a workshop with selected international experts, and is aimed at being a starting point to discuss and share the concept for net business ethics. The organizers realize that there is no standard understanding of the net business ethics concept yet, therefore this workshop will serve to bring this topic to the attention of international community.
The center of our concern is Information Technology, especially the Internet. The use of the Internet undoubtedly provides us with a wonderful new horizon for global communication and global collaboration. We now live in a virtually borderless world, and businesses make use of the new possibilities provided by the internet. However, we the internet also brings about a series of problems that require further reflections on borderless ethics and responsibility for businesses. The national law enforcement of each nation is different and we have no international common understanding yet to regulate the use of the Internet. For our daily life, from children to senior citizens, from churches to commercial companies, from university research to hospitals, from government to individuals, few areas can be kept going without the use of the Internet. A communication problem in one part of the world, the lack of global standards, the manipulation of data, the lack of privacy, and other issues can have a tremendous impact on society. What is our social responsibility in the context of these challenges? iBiZ2008, an international workshop for net business ethics aims at discussing the theme "Global Technology, Ethics, and Social Responsibility: An Agenda for Interdisciplinary and International Research on Borderless Net Business" as a way of addressing these questions. The workshop will take advantage of the global framework provided by the International Association of Methodist-related Schools, Colleges, and Universities (IAMSCU), an organization that congregates more than 750 institutions in 70 countries, such as Boston University and Duke University (United States), Aoyama Gakuin University and Kwansey Gakuin University (Japan), Universidade Metodista de Piracicaba e Universidade Metodista de S?o Paulo (Brazil), Ewha University (Korea), Isabella Thoburn College (India), Africa University (Zymbabwe), University of Winnipeg (Canada) and Westminster School (Australia), and many others. The workshop also has the support of the the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry (GBHEM) in the United States and the Instituto Metodista de Servi?os Educacionais (COGEIME) in Brazil. Thus, it is an opportunity to foster new types of collaborations among the IAMSCU member educational institutions. The workshop will include speakers and participants from multiple continents, especially from countries such as the United States, Brazil, and Japan, Germany, Zymbabwe, Canada, India, and many others. With this unique articulation of international researchers, global institutions, and common concerns with questions related to technology, Christian ethics, and social responsibility, the participants will join together and not only discuss recent international research on borderless net business, but also compile an agenda for our future activities and reflect on how the biblical passages mentioned at the beginning can be reinterpreted in the 21st century.