Chapter 5 International Business example #63834

allow for "facilitating payments." The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act outlawed the paying of bribes to foreign government officials to gain business. Some U.S. businesses immediately objected that the act would put U.S. firms at a competitive disadvantage (there is no evidence that has occurred). The act was subsequently amended to allow for "facilitating payments."

an ethical dilemma. Ethical dilemmas are situations in which none of the available alternatives seems ethically acceptable.

Leaders. Leaders help to establish the culture of an organization, and they set the example that others follow.

Business ethics. Business ethics are the accepted principles of right or wrong governing the conduct of businesspeople, and an ethical strategy is a strategy, or course of action, that does not violate these accepted principles.

the Sullivan principles. GM adopted what came to be called the Sullivan principles, named after Leon Sullivan, a black Baptist minister and a member of GM's board of directors. Sullivan argued that it was ethically justified for GM to operate in South Africa so long as two conditions were fulfilled. First, the company should not obey the apartheid laws in its own South African operations (a form of passive resistance). Second, the company should do everything within its power to promote the abolition of apartheid laws.

The righteous moralist approach is typically associated with managers from developed nations. A righteous moralist claims that a multinational's home-country standards of ethics are the appropriate ones for companies to follow in foreign countries. This approach is typically associated with managers from developed nations.

An ethical dilemma. The practice of "gift-giving" between the parties to a business negotiation is considered right and proper behavior in many Asian cultures, while some Westerners view the practice as a form of bribery, and therefore unethical, particularly if the gifts are substantial. This is a business-oriented example of an ethical dilemma.

weigh carefully all of the social benefits and costs of a business action. Utilitarian approaches to ethics hold that the moral worth of actions or practices is determined by their consequences. As a philosophy for business ethics, it focuses attention on the need to weigh carefully all of the social benefits and costs of a business action and to pursue only those actions where the benefits outweigh the costs.

organizational culture

not always clear-cut. The ethical obligations of a multinational corporation toward employment conditions, human rights, corruption, and environmental pollution are not always clear-cut.

standing in the shoes of a stakeholder and asking how a proposed decision might impact that stakeholder. Stakeholder analysis involves a certain amount of what has been called moral imagination. This means standing in the shoes of a stakeholder and asking how a proposed decision might impact that stakeholder.

ethics officers. To make sure that a business behaves in an ethical manner, a number of firms now have ethics officers. These individuals are responsible for making sure that all employees are trained to be ethically aware, that ethical considerations enter the business decision-making process, and that the company's code of ethics is followed.

depends on one's cultural perspective. From an international business perspective, some argue that what is ethical depends on one's cultural perspective.

False. The Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions obliges member states and other signatories to make the bribery of foreign public officials a criminal offense. The convention excludes facilitating payments made to expedite routine government action from the convention.

True. Home-country managers working abroad in multinational firms (expatriate managers) may experience more than the usual degree of pressure to violate their personal ethics.

False. Using Hofstede's dimensions of social culture, the study found that enterprises headquartered in cultures where individualism and uncertainty avoidance are strong were more likely to emphasize the importance of behaving ethically than firms headquartered in cultures where masculinity and power distance are important culture attributes. Such analysis suggests that enterprises headquartered in a country such as Russia, which scores high on masculinity and power distance measures, and where corruption is endemic, are more likely to engage in unethical behavior than enterprises headquartered in Scandinavia.

False. A naive immoralist asserts that if a manager of a multinational sees that firms from other nations are not following ethical norms in a host nation, that manager should not either.

False. Kantian ethics hold that people should be treated as ends and never purely as means to the ends of others. People have dignity and need to be respected as such.

True. Many companies now draft a code of ethics, which is a formal statement of the ethical priorities a business adheres to. Often, the code of ethics draws heavily upon documents such as the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which itself is grounded in Kantian and rights-based theories of moral philosophy.

True. Building an organizational culture that places a high value on ethical behavior requires incentive and reward systems, including promotions that reward people who engage in ethical behavior and sanction those who do not.