Business Ethical Concepts In A Cultural Context

Discuss about the Business Ethical Concepts in a Cultural Context.

 

The following essay is going to illustrate the ethical concept of business in a cultural context. Before venturing the words into the details of business ethics and its core concepts, it is quite necessary to understand what business ethic stands for. Business ethics is primarily a study of specific business policies and practices pertaining to the prospectively contentious issues. The issues relate d ti the business ethics are corporate government, internal and insider trading, business discrimination, bribery, CSR (corporate social responsibility) and fiduciary obligations of the business organisations. Business ethics deals with the trust created between the consumers and the marketers or other participant in the market. The participating trust has the strongest stamina to hold the business in all possible ways.  There are several factors and concepts of business ethics. it is somehow related to the philosophy of business, the political genre of understanding business concept and the basic psychological move of the consumers i.e. business ethics in terms of the consumer behaviour. Politically speaking business ethics is se on certain rules that are actually stringent determinant of how one should carry on the business policies and performances maintaining firm relation with the customers (Crane and Matten 2016).

There are measurement details of business ethics that are driven by the National Business Ethics Survey. The survey is published every two years. The core business ethics encompasses the business values, organisational behaviour, and social responsibility of the corporate and so on.  

An instance from the Kellogg could be taken into account pertaining to the cultural context of business ethical practice.  Provision of rich bequest of veracity and due respect to that one is one of the most paradigmatic phases in the ethical practices of the business. With the combination of global code of ethics and the business value of Kellogg’s, the company has been into a fair business over years. Global code of ethics has different characters in respect to the individual countries.  Since the core value of any business is to satisfy the customers with providing them with quality product or service, in most of the cases the Global Code of Business Ethics varies from country to country. However, there are some certain cultural contests in terms of designing the business ethics of a company. This essay is not going to talk about the cultural aspects of business ethics of a company it broadens the idea in a much theoretical manner.  

Three business theories are to be considered while understanding the ethical concept of business in terms of its cultural aspects. These theories are:

1. i) Descriptive Ethical Theories
2. ii) Normative Ethical Theories
3. i) Descriptive ethical theories illustrate ethical phenomena of the business groups.
4. ii) Normative Ethical theories provide general rules and principles of behaviour.

A descriptive approach to ethics tends to describe the moral systems of groups or societies. These theories go no to practice empirical research on the individual business or business groups (Crane and Matten 2016). Ethical values of the business group are highly potential land they need to develop the conceptual bonding between the customer and the marketers. One of the most important issues related to the cultural corners of the business is effective marketing strategy. In terms of the Western business arena, the business ethics depends on sound marketing strategy, professional marketing research, world- class product or service development, effective pricing, motivated promotion and appropriate distribution of the product or service.  These are few basic steps while venturing for the business ethics. There are different cultural conflicts faced by the business organisations during their market practices. the conflicting ethical behaviour consists of :

1. i) Illegal campaigning
2. ii) Bribery

iii) Deliberation in selling defective goods

1. iv) Manipulation in information and so on 

Culture is inevitably the basis of a business practice.  In the code of ethics, there is a common agreement between two countries regarding the ethical behaviour of the business managers and business transactions. The ethical agreement represents the values of two business organisations. The major problem in dealing with the ethical problems in the context is its universal definition. The cultural behaviour is categorised in two different ways:  overt action and collection of group of ethical values. According to Schein, there are three levels of cultural aspect of ethical values of business practices. The first level depicts the culture and its arti-facts. It constitutes of the public works, work of art, hospitals, museums and other public sectors where the business is directly related to the service to the people. Public entertainment and emergency services are related to the first level. In this sphere, the actual work of the sectors is to provide transparent and truthful services to the public.

The second level of the cultural aspect constitutes of the individuals holding dear that leads to the behavioural aspect. The behaviour serves as the rules of conduct. These rules of conduct act as the guidelines to the behavioural pattern in terms of individual business performance. It guides the individuals to follow certain business norms with limited physical space provided. This is the deepest level of cultural behaviour.

The third level of business ethics is a hidden one. It represents the perception of the individuals. The perception pertains to the understanding of the reality and it also goes on to the pessimistic view of the business ethics. This hidden level creates a link between the individuals and   business interactions.

Ethical business consideration is related to different dimensions. As per the scholars’ view there are six dimensions of culture ((Ferraro and Brody 2015).  These are:

1. i) Social Assumption

ii)Emphasis on Interpersonal Relations

iii) Value of Personal Space

1. iv) Social Assumption on Relationship of Man and Nature
2. v) Value of personal space in the society
3. vi) Social orientation towards time

One of the most important dimensional changes felt within the business practice of an individual as well as a business organisation is the basic understanding of the ethical values through the service provision to the customers.  The ethical guidelines followed by the managers during business practices are ventured through the study of business ethics.

Reference:

Crane, A. and Matten, D., 2016. Business ethics: Managing corporate citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization. Oxford University Press.

Crane, A. and Matten, D., 2016. Business ethics: Managing corporate citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization. Oxford University Press.

Ferraro, G. and Brody, E.K., 2015. Cultural Dimension of Global Business. Routledge.

Hoffman, W.M., Frederick, R.E. and Schwartz, M.S. eds., 2014. Business ethics: Readings and cases in corporate morality. John Wiley & Sons.

Weiss, J.W., 2014. Business ethics: A stakeholder and issues management approach. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.