At a time when managers often provide fodder for unseemly headlines, and some are even compared unflatteringly with locusts, today’s business leaders are called upon as never before to demonstrate the moral justification for their activities, and to ensure that it is understood by all the key stakeholders of a company. What is required is nothing less than a management renaissance, based on a thoroughgoing concept of corporate leadership; there is no less a need for decision makers who hold themselves to the highest standards, with a positive perception of their fu- tion as agents of dissemination, and who are committed to the good not only of “their” firm, but also of society in general. Particularly in today’s environment of significant movements of goods, the hi- est priority is accorded to the social and labor policy elements of company m- agement. For its part, the State must create advantageous framework conditions and promote the willingness to accept risk that is fundamental to the entrepren- rial spirit. A social, constitutional state with a liberal social structure has always been and remains the prime concern of democratically spirited forces everywhere. When managers live up to the expectations with which they are entrusted, they lend the social market economy – often misunderstood and sometimes even m- used – a new luster. This in turn fulfils the hopes and expectations of those Eu- peans for whom the development of pan-European structures stands for the rec- ery from post-communist stagnation.weiterlesen