IRI invited to moderate panels at a prestigious Romanian business congress

November 18, 2010. IRI was at the very center of the fourth day of Bucharest’s prestigious business congress Zilele Biz. IRI's co-director, Maciej Kisilowski, was invited to moderate two discussion panels on management philosophy and corporate social responsibility. The discussion gathered a select group of senior business leaders. The speakers’ list included senior executives of Unicredit, Danone, Avon Cosmetics, BCR (Romania’s largest bank), and Heineken, president of the Romanian Red Cross and other prominent NGOs, as well as a number of well-known media personalities. “We don’t need to waste our time having a typical CSR talk,” remarked prof. Kisilowski in his opening statement. “What we want to talk about is how to change the time-honored managerial paradigms that remain so entrenched in this part of the world. For we are not going to move forward if we don’t find ways to make our businesses more purpose-driven: to inspire our employees, customers, stockholders and governmental regulators by convincing them that a continuous financial success of our enterprises can benefit our society in some unique way.”

Guided by this framing, speakers proved open to share numerous stories of their successes and failures in making Romanian business and nonprofit organizations more purpose-driven. Zilele Biz organizers seemed to be pleased with IRI’s participation. “It was amazing to have [IRI] at our event,” said Alexandru Ardelean, a senior member Zilele Biz’s management team. Mr. Ardelean added that, in his view, prof. Kisilowski was  “perfect in bringing order to the panels and giving [the speakers] a proper feedback.”