When values clash - business ethics - includes related articles

HR Magazine, Sept, 1994 by Alan Richter, Cynthia Barnum

Defining ethical business conduct often depends on whom you talk to. Setting business standards based on core values helps employees play by the same rules.

At a recent conference on global business ethics, a distinguished panel of ethics experts grappled with the question: "Which is more ethical-treating people as if they were all the same or all different?" No one presumed to know the right answer to that question in every situation, and that's the crux of the problem with global business ethics.

Ethics has never been easy to define because it deals with intangibles like values and beliefs. But ethical standards provide us with an ability to resolve global ethical dilemmas. Without standards, we restrict our ability to do business effectively in a borderless world. And, paradoxically, our search for a universal code of ethics intensifies just as we become increasingly aware of cultural differences.

THE MAJOR ETHICAL DILEMMAS

There are two things to note about these examples. First, they deal with ethical dilemmas that could happen anywhere. The issue of fairness, for example, is a general ethical issue--not just work related. Second, these three examples reflect three major business ethical areas. According to Professor Thomas Donaldson,(*) they are gender, bribery and corruption, and the relations between developed and developing countries (or first and third worlds).

These examples are generalized, so one cannot be expected to respond to them in specific detail. However, they do highlight some of the ethical dilemmas of doing business globally. And they point to levels of involvement--both individual and organizational. Ethical behavior involves both. These examples are ethical dilemmas because there is a clash of perceptions and a clash of values in each scenario. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" might be one approach to these situations, but most people would agree that cultural relativity is different from ethical relativity--which is why this maxim is hard to swallow when referring to the three scenarios.

PRIORITIZING VALUES DIFFERENTLY

Most managers with global experience would agree that there must be some set of shared, global ethical values. This is not too surprising because we are all one species with common basic needs and desires, though expression is different around the globe. But what are these common values?

Rushworth Kidder, from the Institute for Global Ethics, conducted a global values survey and discovered the following common values: love, truth, freedom, fairness, community, tolerance, responsibility and reverence for life. The list is culled from interviews with extraordinary people from all over the world (see Kidder's Shared Values for a Troubled World, Jossey-Bass, 1994). However, even if there is an underlying agreement on such values, these values are prioritized differently among cultures and might be expressed very differently from culture to culture.

For example, all cultures will respect individual freedom and justice (equality), but perhaps each to a differing degree. And then there is the issue of values and their resulting behaviors--individuals and cultures vary greatly in their translations. So even if two cultures share a value, they may act it out very differently.

In the first scenario concerning gender, perhaps the value of fairness clashes with tolerance (or respect for diversity); in the second, truth (or integrity) might clash with tolerance; and in the third, fairness perhaps clashes with responsibility. Furthermore, in each example, there is the feeling that ethical dilemmas are often unresolvable at the level at which they first appear.

Professor Richard De George (in Competing with Integrity in International Business, Oxford University Press, 1993) proposes the concept of "ethical displacement." The concept stipulates that many ethical dilemmas need to be displaced upwards to a higher level in order to solve or dissolve the dilemma. For example, only a company policy might solve a dilemma for a manager, and it might take an industry or government directive to solve an ethical dilemma at a company or industry level. The consequence of this might be, for example, that managers are not expected personally to have to make a decision about accepting a gift from a supplier, but must simply follow a company policy that stipulates just what to do (or say) in such a circumstance.

INTENTION IS DIFFERENT FROM ACTION

Even if you and your organization have sorted out its values, prioritized them and identified acceptable behaviors, there is still the issue of action. Good intentions are common; our challenge as individuals and companies is to act on intention. But appreciate how hard this is in the real world, and understand that living these values fully is akin to trying to be absolutely objective.

As individuals, we cannot be absolutely objective, since we are rooted in subjectivity. For example, we have families, and we tend to treat our own children differently from the children of strangers. But we can strive to create an objective view and understanding of the world. The mark of a saint or holy global person might be that ability to be equally caring, compassionate and trustworthy to everyone, everywhere.