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perspective. Realizing, however, that this demonstration, authoritative and reflective as it may be within the system, could and should also speak to other circles of human practice, such as other religions and business, it was decided to add two more but smaller sections. Section two forms an interlude between prescriptions and practices. It is called a dialogical interlude not only because it forms a stepping stone between the elaboration on the 'enlightened perception' in section one and the attempt at corporate responsibility in section three, but also because it is most literally a dialogue. The first type of dialogues, termed the religion dialogues, are structured encounters with authorities of other religions (i.e., other than Jainism). The second type of dialogue is with the author himself, as both a Jain and a businessman.
The religion dialogue engages with the question how authorities of five other religions, namely Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism, think and talk about a few basic concepts in every religion, namely soul and faith, and the link between external (such as ritual) expression and faith. This is done by asking these questions to five selected authority figures in a simple straightforward manner, and by noting their response, without further discussion. This is a form of triangulation, but without the discursive dialogue that is often connected to that concept. One might rather call it open questionnaire. It thus puts the preceding engagement with one of the central concepts in Jainism into a modestly comparative perspective.
The business dialogue, on the other hand, communicates to the reader the business voice behind the religious voice, and simultaneously the ethically inspired voice behind the practitioner's voice. After a tentative conclusion this forms the bridge to section three on the ideals and practice in Corporate Social Responsibility.
This section three-strongly advocated by the supervisors - focuses on how the author's own itinerary of leading a family life and running a worldwide diamond business could serve as persuasive evidence of the possibility to actually 'do' as much as possible the principles that were expounded and reflected upon in the first section. There was no need in that case to have a student ask questions or do interviews with the actor to get to grips with that evidence, because the author himself is the actor. Yet, because the presentation of such evidence is Self-referring anyway, the section started
with a modest form of externalization, namely dialogical interviewing by a third informed agent, one on how Jain ethics relate to family life and business (in diamond industry) in a more general sense, but not alienated from the author's personal and lived experience, and a second, more descriptive one, on how these principles may lead to Corporate Social Responsibility, and sustainability in particular. These reflective interviews are then followed by a thorough real-term description of how the notion of sustainability actually supports the business strategy of the author's own business, Rosy Blue, and how this is gradually extended to the topic of children's rights, and is implemented step by step in the broader world, not only at the level of a nation, namely Belgium, but even at the level of the United Nations, or the Global Compact. The purpose of this section, it should be very clear, is NOT to make a comparative study of similar initiatives in other businesses, or to
