OREANDA-NEWS. December 15, 2010. Lviv Business School and CSR Ukraine Community organized an international conference in Lviv. SCM became a partner of the event.

The two-day international conference "Developing Responsible Leadership in CEE: How to Build a Critical Mass of Responsible Leaders and Managers in Central and Eastern Europe" ended in Lviv on 3 December.

To achieve the main goal of contributing to the development of the responsible leadership in the Central and Eastern Europe, the delegates addressed a number of intermediate objectives:

        to make a list of competencies required from a responsible leader and manager

        to identify the competencies required in the CEE countries

        to share the best practices of development of CSR competencies in the region

        to meet the main players in this area and learn the instruments and approaches, which can be applied to develop CSR competencies

        to get new ideas for their organizations, the national institutional environment and the region.

Business schools, businesses as well as politicians and NGOs from Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Hungary, Slovenia, and Great Britain attended the conference. SCM Group was represented by SCM managing company, Metinvest and DTEK.

Alexandra Zayarnaya, CSR Manager, spoke for SCM, which supported the event, with a report titled "Growing fast and growing responsibly. Understanding CSR competences".

"SCM was among the first in Ukraine to have started to introduce the principles of corporate responsibility and sustainable development. In 2006 the Ukrainian market was only starting to understand these principles. Many saw CSR as sponsorship and charity and were discussing the American and Japanese models of CSR. The way Ukraine will choose was on the agenda. Being a leader SCM bore a big responsibility as we set the standard. We took the European model of corporate responsibility, when the CSR principles lie at the heart of business activities," said Alexandra Zayarnaya.

"The event today shows that the Ukrainian discourse about the corporate responsibility fully matches the European one. The analysis framework suggested by the leading European business school and the European Academy of Business in Society applies to the Ukrainian businesses. SCM contributed to developing the modern understanding of CSR in Ukraine by setting example of its activities and supporting the Local Network of the Global Compact. We will continue to work in this area in cooperation with such organizations as Lviv Business School," added Ms Zayarnaya.