Intercultural Ethics

Having the pleasure and opportunity to work with a wide variety of individuals from different cultural backgrounds, I felt that doing a paper discussing this would benefit me at my current job and most likely at job positions for me in the future. Many companies are looking to tap into the money that awaits them in foreign countries, and issues such as which laws to abide an proper business ethics are just a couple of issues that must be dealt with. As stated in our textbook, a perplexing problem faces organizations and individuals who do business around the world. Whose values, culture, and ultimately, laws do you follow (pg 86)? Historically, interest in business ethics accelerated dramatically during the 1980s and 1990s, both within major corporations and within academia. For example, today most major corporate websites lay emphasis on commitment to promoting non-economic social values under a variety of headings (e.g. ethics codes, social responsibility charters) (wikipedia.org). As an employee for a major company, I realize top management and supervisors play a major role in ensuring all the employees whom they are responsible for are abiding by specific rules, laws and regulations. When these positions are moved to other countries, some rules, laws and regulations are sure to be lost in translation. Thanks to recent advances in technologies which allow people in separate countries to communicate in real time, a lot of issues can be quickly addressed and solved before major laws are broken. Today most companies that are active in global markets have ethical codes of conduct. These codes are public documents and can usually be found on company Web sites (pg 86). Anderson Adelphia of AOL Time Warner stated in addressing what he called a crisis in business ethics "We will show you that honesty does pay and that creating a culture of straight talk and integrity not only keeps the media at bay, but also makes an organization more competitive in the global economy and better trusted by customers, employees and shareholders (ccis.edu). Perhaps one of the biggest debates in the field of intercultural communication is whether we can apply the same ethical dimensions or framework to all cultures, or whether each culture has its own standard. The latter view, that each culture determines for itself what is right and wrong, was held by most anthropologists and intercutluralists for a long time, and still held by many (my.ilstu.edu). Ethics codes become increasingly