The Effect of Cultural Attributes on Responses to Key Universal Ethical Issues in Business
Dissertation, The Florida State University (
1997)
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Abstract
As more organizations engage in international trade managers will be faced with an increasingly complex business environment. One important facet of conducting business with individuals from different cultural backgrounds is understanding their diverse ethical orientations. The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between individual cultural attributes and responses to common business ethics dilemmas. The specific issues examined were: ecological conservation, rule compliance, sex discrimination, and child labor. ;A sample of 173 managers from Chile, Australia, and the United States was obtained for the study. All of the managers were employed by a large multinational financial institution which is based out of the Netherlands. The results suggest that recognizing a moral issue does not mediate the relationship between an individual's cultural values and moral judgment. The results also indicate that relationships exist between individualism and ecological conservation, uncertainty avoidance and rule compliance, masculinity and sex discrimination, and power distance and child labor. Additional exploratory analyses revealed that differences exist across national groups and between men and women