Cultural Values and International Differences in Business Ethics

About This Resource
As business continues to become a worldwide affair with more and more companies relying on oversea markets for success, differences in cultural values become an increasing issue.

This article analyses various ethical policies of businesses in various countries and various industries around the globe in order to investigate any differences. The article investigates approximately 2700 firms in 24 countries according to human rights policy, governance of bribery and corruption as well as the comprehensiveness, implementation and communication of their codes of ethics. The various ethical policies are compared to the Hofstede’s cultural indicators in order to investigate the differences.

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Monash Library Details

 * Authors:
 * Scholtens, Bert Dam, Lammertjan


 * Source:
 * Journal of Business Ethics, 10/1/2007, Vol. 75, Issue 3, p. 273-284


 * Publisher Information:
 * Springer


 * Publication Year:
 * 2007


 * Subject Terms:
 * Business ethics Codes of ethics Cultural values


 * Description:
 * We analyze ethical policies of firms in industrialized countries and try to find out whether culture is a factor that plays a significant role in explaining country differences. We look into the firm's human rights policy, its governance of bribery and corruption, and the comprehensiveness, implementation and communication of its codes of ethics. We use a dataset on ethical policies of almost 2,700 firms in 24 countries. We find that there are significant differences among ethical policies of firms headquartered in different countries. When we associate these ethical policies with Hofstede's cultural indicators, we find that individualism and uncertainty avoidance are positively associated with a firm's ethical policies, whereas masculinity and power distance are negatively related to these policies.


 * Document Type:
 * research article


 * Language:
 * English


 * ISSN:
 * 01674544 15730697


 * Availability:
 * http://www.jstor.org/stable/25123993


 * Rights:
 * Copyright 2007 Springer


 * Accession Number:
 * edsjsr.25123993