Explaining the Fundamental Relationship Between Corporate/Business Ethics and National Culture

Abstract

Corporate ethics is adapted from the words: ‘sound moral values’. It attempts at putting in place some sense of ‘sound moral values’ within a company’s employee population as regards how they could conduct business responsibly. The recent corporate scandals globally (which have been taken to unprecedented levels) have made managers and researchers to turn their attentions to questions of ethics management. This paper therefore examines how national culture influences ‘sound moral values’ in business enterprises. As the main objective of business enterprises is to maximise profit, this should be done within some acceptable ‘sound moral values’ or what can be referred to as business/corporate ethics. The study being qualitative relies on the interview research technique while employing primary and secondary sources of data collection. The study concludes that national culture determines corporate/business culture while corporate/business culture is fashioned after national culture. The implication of this is that multinational companies cannot expect that the same business ethics operating in their home countries can be ‘exported’ to the host countries. This is mainly because of differences in the culture of the host countries and the home countries. Secondly, a template of business ethics is therefore problematic if not impossible.