Ethics-at-Work in Japanese Business: An Empirical Study of Japanese Managers' Perceptions of Ethics in Their Corporate Lives

Dissertation, The George Washington University (2001)
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Abstract

This dissertation research was designed as an exploratory, descriptive, qualitative study of Japanese managers' perceptions of ethics in their corporate lives. Twenty-seven managers from three Japanese corporations, which had been making overt efforts in institutionalize ethics, were selected as the interview participants. ;Through in-depth interviews based on the naturalistic paradigm, the researcher explored these managers' responses to five research questions: In which areas do ethical problems arise? Why do managers think these problems are "ethical"? What types of ethical problems are there? What factors influence managers' ethical decisions and behavior? and How do managers deal with these ethical problems? Data were analyzed by identifying categories of responses to the five research questions. The interview transcripts are presented in Volume Two as first-hand reports of ethics-at-work in Japanese corporations, and to establish the trustworthiness of the study. ;The study reveals similarities and differences in the ways in which managers perceive ethics in their corporate lives, as between the Japanese and American contexts. One major characteristic particular to Japanese managers is the striking influence of the organizational culture and values on their ways of recognizing ethical problems. In this sense, Japanese managers recognize ethical situations at the surface level of their self-consciousness, the "organizational-self." ;However, the study also reveals that, when faced with ethical problems that are difficult to solve, Japanese managers intuitively make ethical judgments, based mainly on personal values and beliefs. In such difficult situations, they often delve into the deeper level of their self-consciousness, the "inner-self." ;Another major finding is that Japanese managers encounter more difficulty in acting on what they believe to be right than in finding the right thing to do. Hence they often need some kind of organizational support to act properly. ;Finally, based on these findings, the researcher generates propositions for future studies on business ethics in the Japanese context, and makes practical suggestions about how Japanese corporations can develop effective ways of institutionalizing ethics

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