• Charles Sturt University in Bathurst will host the first Australasian Business Ethics Network conference, with international participants, held in regional Australia on Wednesday 26 to Friday 28 November

Regional NSW will be at the heart of discussions when an international business ethics conference is held at Charles Sturt University this week.

The 15th Australasian Business Ethics Network (ABEN) Annual Conference and hybrid higher degree research (HDR) workshop and will be held at the University’s Bathurst campus from Wednesday 26 to Friday 28 November.

The ABEN has members in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Africa and Europe and the conference will be officially opened by ABEN Chair Dr Alessandro Bressan.

The conference has been organised by Senior Lecturer in Marketing in the Charles Sturt School of Business Dr Felicity Small and colleagues Associate Professor in Management Alain Neher and Lecturer in Human Resource Management Dr Lucia Wuersch.

The conference theme is On the Road: Making Ethical and Sustainable Decisions and Dr Small said this is the first time that the ABEN conference has been held outside a major Australian city.

“All previous hosts have been one of the eight ‘sandstone’ universities in metropolitan areas, so this is the first time the event has been hosted by a regional university,” Dr Small said.

“We volunteered to host the conference in Bathurst because we wanted the chance to showcase the regional area and Charles Sturt University as the leading regional university.”

Dr Small said a key aim of the conference is to share Charles Sturt’s research interests and capabilities to the Network and build potential future collaborations with the more established institutions.

“Last year, the conference was held in Adelaide, with a boardroom lunch at KPMG,” she said.

“To really contrast that experience, this year for activities beyond the formalities of keynote addresses and presentation of research papers by academics and research student, among other things we planned the eco-walk with the local Boundary Road Landcare Association.

“The aim is to showcase, to urban academics, the pleasures of the regions and to see first-hand how regional organisations are managing environmental issues in sustainable and ethical ways.”

The packed three-day program features more than 50 research presentations and a public lecture by Charles Sturt Professor of Public Ethics, Clive Hamilton, AM, at 9.40am on Thursday 27 November on the topic ‘Entropy and Ethics in the Anthropocene’.

Another keynote address at 9am on Friday 28 November titled ‘Tensions between business ethics and sustainability’ will be delivered online by Professor Isabel Rimanoczy, an academic devoted to promoting ‘change accelerators’.

Of particular interest to central west and wider regional communities is the academic paper presented by Charles Sturt’s Dr Lucia Wuersch and Associate Professor Dr Valerie Ingham titled, ‘Community Disaster Fatigue in the Blue Mountains, NSW: Investigating Ethical Solutions using the Resilient Villages Pilot Project’.

Another regionally relevant presentation is ‘Ethical community engagement during regional Australia’s solar, wind and battery energy storage systems (BESS) boom’, by Mr John Martin.

The organisers welcome local business professionals who are interested to participate in discussions about all aspects of business ethics. Conference registrations remain open via Eventbrite.