The technical school of Engineers of the University of Navarra (TECNUN) inaugurated the Rafael Escolá Chair of Business Ethics with a discussion paper by Jeffrey Pfeffer, Full Professor at Stanford University (USA). Also participating were representatives from the business, institutional and academic spheres, such as Felipe Prósper, president of Idom; and Alejo Sison, director of the Chair

Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer recalled that "today's economic behavior in the business world is based on an ethic focused only on achieving results. What is really important is the end to which we aspire and the means lack ethical force, because in fact the end justifies the means". The American expert underlined that all this "generates an amoral behavior in the work of some business leaders and of some business school students".

He also pointed out that this absence of values materializes in companies where the priority goal is to maximize profit and share value. And he explained that in this way "the shareholder is enthroned at the expense of forgetting the other protagonists of the business, when the right thing to do would be to think of the interests of all groups, giving priority to the customers". In fact, he added, "there are programs of study that argue that taking into account the interests of employees leads to better results. The exclusive pursuit of profit maximization contributes to the formation of selfish people for whom anything goes in order to achieve the goal proposal.

For his part, Felipe Prósper gave a portrait of Rafael Escolá and pointed out that a few years after founding Idom, he distributed the equity value of the business among the engineers who worked in it because "he did not want to have employees but partners in the work and in the property". The current president of Idom said that Escolá's imagination "constantly brought original ideas to any status, being a great autodidact. His way of doing things, his style of governing and working as a team was based on profound human principles with which he was always coherent.

Felipe Prósper finally emphasized how Rafael Escolá "meditated at length on the ethical dilemmas that came his way in his working life. Anecdotes related to professional secrecy, unnecessary projects, interested opinions, changes in business, data leaks, appropriation of ideas, etc.". And he concluded his speech by saying that Escolá was not a professional of ethics or Philosophy, but an experienced engineer and profound manager "who reflected on his own experiences, developing what he called the 'ethics of elegance'".

Alejo Sison, professor at the University of Navarra and director of the Chair Rafael Escolá, explained that the goal of this initiative is to promote the integral professional excellence of engineers in both their technical and ethical aspects. This goal coincides with the trajectory of Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, "who has been concerned with studying and dismantling the psychological and institutional obstacles to the implementation of practices that denote a high Degree of commitment of people to the business in which they work".

Rafael Escolá (Barcelona 1919- Bilbao 1995) graduated from the technical school of Industrial Engineers of the University of Barcelona. His professional career has always been linked to engineering and construction, with the founding of the business Idom, which currently employs 1,200 professionals. His concern for the training of young people led him to teaching ethics for entrepreneurs at the School of Engineering of the University of Navarra, with enthusiastic dedication. This School has paid tribute to him with the inauguration of the Chair that bears his name.