Managing Business Ethics

1
Managing Business Ethics

• Chapter 11
• Treviño Nelson 5th Edition

2
Chapter 11 Overview

• Introduction
• Focus on the Individual Expatriate Manage
• The Organization in a Global Business Environment
• Conclusion

3
Focus on the Individual Expatriate Manager

• Difficulty of foreign business assignments
• Need for training and guidance
• Foreign language proficiency
• Learning about the culture

4
Individualism/Collectivism

• Responsibility primarily to self versus
  family/group
• Most Asian / Latin American countries -
  collectivist
• U.S., Canada, Australia, most N. Europeans -
  individualist

5
Power Distance

• Acceptance of hierarchical or unequal
  distribution of power, inequality
• India, Philippines, Mexico, Venezuela - high on
  power distance
• U.S., Israel, most Northern Europeans lower on
  power distance

6
Donaldsons Approach to Developing Corporate
Guidelines

• Reject ethical relativism
• Reject ethical imperialism
• Develop an ethical threshold for corporate
  behavior abroad based upon core values that can
  be translated into specific guidelines

7
Development of Transcultural Corporate Ethic - 4
Principles

• Inviolability of national sovereignty
• Social equity
• Market integrity in business transactions
• Human rights and fundamental freedoms

8
UN Global Compact

• Protection of internationally proclaimed human
  rights
• Noncomplicity in human rights abuses
• Support for freedom of association
• Elimination of forced and compulsory labor
• Effective abolition of child labor
• Elimination of employment and workplace
  discrimination
• Support for a precautionary approach to
  environmental challenges
• Initiatives to promote greater environmental
  responsibility
• Development and diffusion of environmentally
  friendly technologies

9
Global Codes of Conduct

• Address Eight Principles
• Fiduciary
• Property
• Reliability
• Transparency
• Dignity
• Fairness
• Citizenship
• Responsiveness

10
Case The Gift

• You're an account executive with a multinational
  financial firm, and one of your biggest accounts
  is that of a shipping magnate in Greece. Several
  months after you've arranged a very complex
  financing to build a new fleet of oil tankers for
  this customer, he asks if you and your wife would
  attend the christening of the first tanker. You,
  of course agree to attend - it would be an insult
  to him if you didn't. When you arrive, he asks
  your wife to break the traditional champagne
  bottle over the bow of the tanker. Two weeks
  after the christening, your wife receives a
  package from your customer. In it is a gold
  bracelet with her initials and the date of the
  christening set in diamonds. To return the gift
  would insult your customer, but accepting it
  would clearly violate your company's policy.
• What should you do?