A message from Professor Thomas White regarding the relationship between IBECC and LMU’s International Business Ethics and Sustainability Case Competition (IBESCC).
I have a received a number of inquiries asking about the relationship between IBECC and Loyola Marymount University’s competition (International Business Ethics and Sustainability Case Competition) and my connection with the latter.
Although IBECC began in 1996 on the LMU campus, and although the university remained our major supporter, IBECC became a multi-organizational entity over the years. The Opus College of Business of the University of Saint Thomas (MN), the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley University, and the Donahue Center for Business Ethics and Social Responsibility at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell became, over time, other significant partners. In 2018, LMU decided to leave the group and launch a new competition that would be “LMU and LA Centric” and would focus on issues of sustainable development. IBESCC would be held on the LMU campus, and it would draw exclusively from judges in the Los Angeles area. In one way, it would expand the range of acceptable cases–nonprofit and governmental organizations would now be allowed. In other ways, the range of acceptable cases was dramatically limited–all topics would have to relate to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
Because LMU wanted IBESCC to be built on a structure similar to that of IBECC, I was asked to help get the new event off the ground. Accordingly, we suspended IBECC for 2019. After IBESCC was successful launched, I retired from LMU. I no longer have any connection with IBESCC. Of course, we wish LMU nothing but the greatest success with their new venture.
Regarding IBECC’s future, we are now an independent nonprofit. Because of Covid, we held online competitions in 2020, 2021, 2022, and will do so again in 2023. We plan to return in person next April.
Thomas White
IBECC Founder and Executive Director