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The Articles and Commentary in this Symposium are another step in a series of conferences exploring dimensions of business influence on sustainable peace. As is often the case with new intellectual initiatives, each step seems to open new doors of insight and new sets of questions. Other presentations delivered at this conference included discussions of how one could design architectural plans in keeping with company goals, while others focused on the development of compassion, forgiveness, and voice. Still others connected the topic to notions of ethical compliance models, dispute resolution, corporate citizenship, and economic development. Beyond these notions, of course, there are fundamental intersections with issues of anthropology, foreign relations scholarship, and case examples of the actions companies have already undertaken. In short, the initial exploration of this topic in the 2001 and 2002 conferences suggest that we have uncovered the proverbial tip of the iceberg.

By design, this conference was constructed to brainstorm about the connection of governance, ethics, and peace. To that end, the conference and these papers were a success. As a novel question, however, we are far from providing a definitive answer to exactly what should be done to foster the connection and, more basically, exactly what the connection looks like. One can, however, identify three general themes emanating from the conference that provide a sense for the opportunities of future research. First, there is a public policy dimension. Corporations gain their authority through state action and the duties of fiduciaries of the corporation arise most definitively from legal directives. Second, there is an intra-organizational dimension. Several participants stressed the importance of building corporate community. This is an admirable task, one that we ourselves advocate, but much more specificity is needed to detail what this means. Finally, unrest is typically situationally specific. Appeasement, for instance, was a standard mechanism to resolve political disputes among rational statesmen, but when Neville Chamberlain tried the same approach with an irrational leader, Adolph Hitler, the results were disastrous. These themes are not meant to be exhaustive. Yet, they appear to present a natural set of next research steps for what we believe will be an important and fruitful area of scholarly inquiry.

This Article demonstrates that there is a plausible, conceptual relationship among corporate governance, business ethics, and sustainable peace. First, the Authors begin by outlining the benefits of and protests against globalization and the reciprocal benefits between geopolitical entities and economic activity. The Article then details specific historical events that foreshadow patterns in the relationship between business and sustainable peace. In looking more closely at those patterns, the Authors argue that through economic progress and mitigation of rivalries in the workplace, multinational corporations can contribute to sustainable peace. Thus, if this argument is correct, the stakes increase dramatically for corporations to consider these issues in their governance practices and for governments to create legislative frameworks to encourage such responsible practices. The Authors propose that incorporating attributes of peaceful societies with current successful corporate governance regimes will help to achieve both economic progress and social harmony. The Article concludes that the future will offer increasingly precise corporate models that contribute to the reduction of bloodshed.