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International Business Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Richard T. De George
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Abstract

International business ethics, as the term implies, cannot be national in character, anymore than international law can be national in character. Yet the analogy to law is as misleading as it is enlightening. For although we can speak of American, German or Japanese law, it is odd to speak of American, German or Japanese ethics. The reason is that ethics is usually thought to be universal. Hence there is simply ethics, not national ethics. Despite this, there is a sense that can be given to American business ethics or German business ethics. American business ethics does not refer to American as opposed to German ethics, but rather to the approach taken by those who do business ethics in the United States. What characterizes the American approach is not that it uses a special ethics or a national ethics, but that it is concerned with certain problems that are embedded in the American socio-economic-political system and faced by American business. German or Japanese business ethics differs from American business ethics in the cases and topics it deals with, in the different set of background institutions it takes for granted or investigates, and in the different culture, history, and social setting in which business operates.

The same is true of what is often called international business ethics insofar as we can distinguish American, German, Japanese approaches to it. International business ethics might refer simply to the comparison of business practices and their ethical evaluation in different countries; it might investigate whether there are in fact ethical norms commonly recognized in all countries that should govern international business and economic transactions, and if there are variations in ethical norms, whether multinational firms are bound by the ethical norms of their mother country, by the ethical norms of their host countries, by either, by both, or by neither. International business ethics might involve broad issues about the economic inequality of nations, the justice of the present international economic order, the ethical status and justifiability of such organizations as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and of their structures and practices, as well as the ethical dimensions of international debt, and the claimed economic dependence of some countries on others, or such global issues as the role of industry in the depletion of the ozone level.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , January 1994 , pp. 1 - 9
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1994

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References

Notes

1 What I am calling the American approach to business ethics can be found in the American textbooks on business ethics, in the discussions of business ethics in the media, and in many of the ethical codes adopted by American corporations.

2 Although business ethics as an academic subject started first in the United States, it is well established in Europe and has taken hold in Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong, and Japan, among other countries. As people in these countries started using the American texts and other materials they saw the need for developing their own materials. For more on this issue see, for example, Jack Mahoney, Teaching Business Ethics in the UK, Europe and the USA: A Comparative Study, London: The Athlone Press, 1990; and the journal, Business Ethics: A European Review.

3 Two books by Americans that deal with international business ethics and attempt to map out some of the issues are: Richard T. De George, Competing With Integrity in International Business, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993; and Thomas Donaldson, The Ethics of International Business, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. In addition there have been a number of conferences dealing with issues in international business. See, for example, Ethics and the Multinational Enterprise, ed. by W. M. Hoffman, A. E. Lange, and D. A. Fedo, Lanham: University Press of America, 1986.

4 For two accounts see Carl A. Kotchian, “The Payoff: Lockheed’s 70-Day Mission to Tokyo,” Saturday Review, July 9, 1977, pp. 7–16; and Robert Shaplen, “Annals of Crime: The Lockheed Incident,” New Yorker, 53 (January 23 and 30, 1978).

5 One of the early books castigating American multinationals was Richard J. Barnet and Ronald E. Muller, Global Reach, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974. See also, among others, Pierre Jalee, The Pillage of the Third World, New York: Modern Reader Paperbacks, 1968.

6 For an account of apartheid in South Africa, and for a list of the Sullivan Principles, see Oliver F. Williams, The Apartheid Crisis: How We Can Do Justice in a Land of Violence, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986.

7 Among the book-length studies of the disaster see Larry Everest, Behind the Poison Cloud: Union Carbide’s Bhopal Massacre, Chicago: Banner Press, 1985; and Paul Shrivastava, Bhopal: Anatomy of a Crisis, Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing, 1987.

8 See, for example, Richard T. De George, Business Ethics, 3rd ed., New York: Macmillan, 1990.

9 Most of the American texts in the field do not call into question the justifiability of the American system of capitalism, which they take for granted.

10 For a discussion of the Act and the 1988 Amendments, see Bartley A. Brennan, “The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Amendments of 1988: ‘Death’ of a Law,” North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation, 15 (1990), pp. 229–47; and Bill Shaw, “Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Amendment of 1988,” Maryland Journal of International Law and Trade, 14 (1990), pp. 161–74.

11 U.S. General Accounting Office, Report to the Congress: “The Impact of the FCPA on U.S. Business,” March 4, 1981; Paul J. Beck, Michael W. Maher, Adrian E. Tschoegl, “The Impact of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act on U.S. Exports,” Managerial and Decision Economics, 12 (August 1991), pp. 295–303.

12 For a development of the argument supporting this claim, see De George, Business Ethics, Chapter 19.