Panel Presentations

Equipping students with an ‘ethical compass’, what does it mean and
what does it imply?
Ms.Lieke van Stekelenburg

Short Intro: Empirical research shows that students say they strive to be(come) moral professionals, but that they have difficulties recognizing and articulating the moral aspects of their professional roles. They seem to lack a moral vocabulary and the moral knowledge to verbalize their aspirations and to provide arguments to explicate or legitimize their moral behaviour. Meanwhile, it is expected that these students are motivated to act according to moral standards (of their profession) when they are confronted with ethical dilemmas during internships.

The presentation addresses the questions: To what extent and in what ways do students regard themselves as a responsible professional with an ethical compass? What do students say about why they experience an ethical dilemma during internship (or not) and apply a strategy? Furthermore, it explores which compass should be part of the aims and content of education provided by UAS, and the possibilities and boundaries of UAS’ contribution to the development of their students’ ethical compasses.

Short Bio: MA in Theology and ethics | Coach for professionals in life and career questions | Teacher at Fontys University of Applied Science (Human Resource Management/ Applied Psychology) | PHD student VU University. Intrigued by the aim of Dutch universities of applied sciences (UAS) to educate their students to become professionals equipped with a moral compass, Lieke has investigated the compass metaphor theoretically and empirically. The results can be used to (better) understand how UAS can make their moral aim a lived practice.

Developing ‘Moral Awareness’ and ‘Moral Assertiveness’ in Future Professionals
using a Digital Learning Module.
Dr. Abiola Makinwa

Short Intro: As the continuing news of financial and corruption scandals show, there is a gap between the ‘theoretical’ knowledge acquired in professional ethics training and the actual ‘actions’ of some professionals in the workfield. Can practical teaching tools be developed to bridge this ‘integrity gap’ and prepare future professionals to be more resilient in the face of moral pressure?

This presentation explores a digital teaching method that (1) prepares students become more ‘morally aware’ and ‘morally assertive’; and (2) helps students to develop, a ‘values-based response mechanism’ to apply when faced with moral challenges. This practical digital teaching tool avoids the ‘one-size fits all’ classroom and provides students with a private and ‘safe’ space for personal, critical, self-reflection. Developing these skills provide students with an articulated ‘moral compass’ and may thereby positively influence ‘moral resilience’ and the ability to act as responsible professionals and change-agents in the workfield.

Short Bio: Dr. Abiola Makinwa is a Principal Lecturer in Commercial Law at the Hague University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. She is a professional member of the International Compliance Association. and served as Chair of the International Bar Association, Structured Criminal Settlements Sub-committee from 2016 – 2018. In 2020, Abiola served as Consultant to the UN Financial, Accountability Transparency and integrity (FACTI) Panel as author of the background paper on ‘Current Developments in Foreign Bribery Investigations and Prosecutions.’ Abiola is the creator of the Integrity Digital Training Module (IntegrityDLM https://integritydlm.net/ ) which she developed under the auspices of a Comenius Senior Fellow Grant from the Netherlands Initiative for Educational Research. Abiola is a well published and frequent speaker on anti-corruption law and policy, as well as Integrity training.

Network Awareness and Integrity.
Dr. Willeke Slingerland

Short Intro: My contribution will be about network awareness and integrity. Too often we assess integrity by regarding the conduct of individuals and organizations while the real challenges are to be found in networks and their dynamics.

Short Bio: Willeke Slingerland is a professor of applied research at Saxion University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. She was the lead researcher in Transparency International’s National Integrity Assessment (NIS) for the Netherlands and the 2021 NIS Aruba study. Willeke and her team have developed a set of tools in order to help political parties in their attempt to professionalize, for instance in how to screen their candidates, among others, on the aspect of integrity.

Assessing the Critical Need for Education on Values: A Professional Viewpoint.
Mr. Geert Vermeulen

Short Intro: While working as an Ethics & Compliance Officer, especially when conducting or coordinating investigations, I often come across situations that make me wonder: “What were these people thinking when they decided to do that? Why didn’t anyone ask whether this was acceptable from an ethical point of view?” When analyzing these situations, I discovered that it often starts relatively innocent but then goes from bad to worse. People got carried away and just don’t seem to think about the potential consequences of their acts for others. And sometimes they did realize that something was wrong, but they just didn’t know how to deal with that.

Many incidents or company scandals occur because there is something wrong in the culture of the organization that prevents employees from raising the uncomfortable questions. When providing ethics & compliance training, we try to change that by training individuals how to recognize and deal with these situations. But it would be even more effective if we can train our future professionals before they go to work. Unfortunately, this is still lacking from most of the curricula at universities and business schools.

Short Bio: The mission of Geert Vermeulen is to help organizations conduct business in an ethical and compliant way. Geert is specialized in establishing and improving ethics and compliance programs in general and anti-corruption programs in specific. In 2016 he founded ECMC: Ethics & Compliance Management & Consulting. ECMC provides compliance training, consulting services and interim ethics & compliance management. Geert also regularly speaks and writes on ethics and compliance. In 2020 Geert launched his new company called ‘The Integrity Coordinator’. This company is an independent, external coordinator of whistleblowing or speak up procedures.

Geert obtained most of his experience in-house as the Chief Compliance Officer of Aon EMEA and the Global Head of Compliance of Damco, the freight forwarding arm of Maersk. He served as one of the Directors of the Netherlands Compliance Institute and has been the President of the Dutch Compliance Officers Association, where he is still the founder/chair of the expert group on Financial Economic Crime and a member of the expert group on Culture and Behavior. He is also a member of the Professional Advisory Committee of the Law Compliance Minor at The Hague University and the Chairman of the co-decision counsel at the Erasmus Gymnasium, the school of his daughters. When he won the National Compliance Award in 2020, he was labelled as ‘the compliance guru’

Integrity, critical thinking and responsibility in Global Citizenship Education.
Dr. Laurence Guérin

Short Intro: In 2011, in a small tax authority office in Bonn Germany, a young tax inspector discovered the CumEx fraud: a 55 billion euros fraud conducted in different European countries. How did she discover the fraud? Something was wrong in a pension fund request she was processing. She had no knowledge about stock market, but she immersed herself in the opaque world of stock market transactions, dug up information and unraveled one of the biggest German tax frauds. The young tax inspector did not let the battalions of lawyers nor the threats of prosecution discourage her, and preferred remaining anonymous. “I am not a heroine. I just did my job,” she said.

I will take this example in order to discuss the relationship between integrity as a moral judgement, integrity as virtue or identity and integrity as being a responsible professional. I will discuss shortly the role of critical thinking and will relate it to integrity and responsibility. Critical thinking is an essential skill in order to be able to make one’s own judgment and to decide on how to act. A person of integrity is someone taking her/his responsibility even if it is difficult or facing hardship. This implies that integrity calls for other type of virtues such as courage and endurance. I will finish by discussing the implication for global citizenship education and teaching our students as global professionals.

Short Bio: Dr. Laurence Guérin is professor of Global citizenship at The Hague University of Applied Sciences and coordinates the research in her research group which focuses on three lines of research: global citizenship as controversial concept in the curriculum, the weaving of global citizenship and global professional in higher education and rights, obligation and participation as foundations for global citizenship. In her dissertation entitled Group problem solving as citizenship education: Mainstream idea of participation revisited Guérin developed and studies group problem solving as citizenship competencies and as an educational approach to citizenship education and education for sustainable development based on the epistemic theory of deliberative democracy. She has published articles on education for sustainable development, learning to think together and participation in citizenship education. She provided lectures and several presentations in Switzerland, Sweden and Germany. In the past, she studied business administration at the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Rennes and worked in several companies in Switzerland and The Netherlands.

The need to ‘ground’ Ethics in practices of Work.
Dr. Jelle van Baardewijk

Short Intro: We witness a growing interest in morality everywhere in Western societies, especially when it comes to diversity, sustainability and, more recently, integrity.

This interest in ethics often remains a matter of word usage and communication, especially in business and policy; less often it is also about action. In my talk, I will argue that this is an ambivalent development that we should not just go along with. The renewed focus of morality can easily remain abstract, leaving it a toothless tiger. I think we have to learn how to properly link morality to work practices and cultural contexts to avoid that. Universal morality (or: contextless morality), as my research reveals, too easily becomes a cover under which you can subsequently legitimize all kinds of questionable economic practices. How can we prevent this from happening? How can we concretize ethics in such a way that it does not derail in pompous vague language? How can we make sure we have a ‘grounded ethics? I think it is crucial to connect with the practices of work, also in professional education. That way we can talk more meaningfully about privacy, or transparency, or equality, for example, and avoid talking in abstractions.

Short Bio: Dr. Jelle van Baardewijk is a philosopher. He works as a practice-oriented research professor in the field of business ethics at the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences and as an assistant professor at the VU University Amsterdam, where he focuses on the topic of public integrity. He obtained his PhD on the hidden curriculum in business studies. In 2018 he won the prize for the best philosophy book in the Netherlands, a book about markets and the good life, which he wrote together with Ad Verbrugge and Govert Buijs.

Uncovering the Hidden Curriculum: Paving the way towards Global Citizenship.
Ms. Eveke de Louw

Short Intro: A crucial step towards becoming a global citizen who can act effectively and appropriately in today’s globally connected world is developing self-awareness of our own cultural lenses. This can only be done when we encounter “otherness”; only then do we become acutely aware of our assumptions and blind spots when our interaction with cultural “others” surprises or sometimes frustrates us.

Yet are we aware as educators that our education is very culturally conditioned and filled with such hidden biases and assumptions? It is this hidden curriculum, which consists of the unspoken or implicit academic, social, and cultural messages conveyed in our teaching and learning practices, that can be a real stumbling block, making the educational experience harder for some students or even excluding them from becoming successful academically. As designers of education, it is crucial that we become aware of the hidden curriculum and reflect on the choices we make in our syllabi. Whose voices are reflected in our curriculum, whose knowledge is accepted, how diverse are the examples and cases we use?

Uncovering the hidden curriculum can expose our academic expectations and standards as well as show the cultural layers in our curriculum and classrooms. As such it is a vital step towards developing self-awareness and fostering purposeful interaction with “otherness”.

Short Bio: Eveke de Louw is an experienced Internationalisation practitioner and an expert in curriculum internationalization, with more than 20 years of experience. In her professional career at the degree programme of European Studies, The Hague University of Applied Sciences, Eveke has performed in key coordinating roles ranging from International Student Co-coordinator, Team Leader and Coordinator of Internationalisation. She has also chaired various committees and played a leading role in curriculum design projects. She is currently Senior International Officer at The Hague University of Applied Sciences leading a university-wide policy team on global citizenship and internationalization, and a steering group member of the internationalization at home expert community of the European Association for International Education (EAIE) . She’s also a 2019 winner of the EAIE Award for Outstanding Contribution.

What is needed to act with Justice and Integrity? Focus on Moral Skills.
Mr. Jeroen Brabers

Short Intro: Prevention is better than cure and education is key to ethical behaviour. It is therefore positive that students are increasingly educated in ethics and integrity. But how to apply those values and ethics? Are students being made aware of the risks of doing the right thing, taking action or speaking up? For that they need to be trained in personal risk management and be made resilient.

In order to give them those skills an interdisciplinary approach is needed and disciplines like psychology and sociology should be made part of the curriculum. Personal integrity is only effective if combined with moral resilience.’

Short Bio: Jeroen Brabers is board member of Transparency International Nederland since October 2019. Jeroen is member of the Professional Advisory Committee, THUAS Compliance Minor (since 2017) and of the Professional Advisory Committee, THUAS Law Programme (since 2018). From 2013 to the end of 2019, he was independent advisor on integrity and compliance. Until late 2012 he was Director Integrity at TNT Express N.V. since 2011 and before that Group Director Integrity at TNT N.V. since March 2005. From mid-1998 to March 2005, he was General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of TNT. As General Counsel Jeroen Brabers was amongst others responsible for Corporate Governance and Compliance. Prior to joining TNT N.V., he fulfilled several functions at Royal PTT Nederland, the former Dutch telecom and postal operator.

Jeroen Brabers started his career as outside counsel and member of the Amsterdam Bar in August 1978. In 1982 he joined a smaller, specialized firm in The Hague, The Netherlands, until 1989. He holds law degrees at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam in The Netherlands and the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.

Towards a minimum Content of Integrity Competences.
How to achieve a transformative learning experience with lasting results.
Ms. Babette Dolfin

Short Intro: Human beings are hard-wired to learn all the time. We learn what we need in order to function and survive in our environment, either through personal experience or through formal learning. When it comes to developing integrity, how can we offer learners an experience that creates a transformative experience that lasts beyond the formal educational moment? We will be discussing the opportunities that education offers us when it comes to supporting learners on their journey toward long-term ethical behavior within their profession. We will talk about how your educational design can create a transformative experience that ‘sticks’.

Short Bio: Babette Dolfin has been coordinating, designing and teaching within universities of higher education for more than 20 years. Her work is consistently geared towards creating effective learning experiences in an international setting. This entails both the seemingly small details of organizing education as the larger questions of what ‘creates’ transformative learning. As a trainer at The Hague Center of Teaching and Learning she now focusses her energy on helping lecturers design effective and engaging curricula and assessments. She is fascinated by our shared challenge to keep formal education relevant by designing deep learning experiences that transform peoples’ reality