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 overseas markets for success, differences in cultural values become an increasingly important issue. A study was done to analyses various ethical policies of businesses in various countries around the globe in order to investigate the causes of any differences. A journal article by B Scholtens and L Dam investigates approximately 2700 businesses in 24 countries according to human rights policy, governance of bribery and corruption as well as the ethical codes that are used. The comprehensiveness, implementation and communication of the various ethical policies s were further investigated. These policies are compared using the first four dimensions Hofstede’s cultural indicators in order to investigate and measure the differences in various countries.

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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