Cultural values and management ethics: A 10-nation study
研究了十个国家中文化价值观(个人主义-集体主义和不确定性规避)对管理者日常决策中伦理判断的影响,发现这些文化维度能解释不同国家间伦理态度的差异。
There is currently a lack of empirical work on cross-cultural differences in ethical attitudes towards day-to-day management decision-making in organizations. Work that currently exists in the area of management ethics also lacks cultural explanations of differences. The present study tries to overcome these deficiencies by providing a model of ethical decision-making that is based on cultural antecedents, which may explain differences in judgements of ethicality, and consequential ethical attitudes or professed behaviour. This article reports a 10-nation empirical study that focuses on ethical 'grey areas' that form part of the day-to-day decision-making in organizations across the globe. Countries were selected to represent variation along two cultural dimensions of 'collectivism-individualism', and 'uncertainty avoidance'. These dimensions were then used to explain national cultural differences in judgements of ethicality of decision items concerned with relations with external stakeholders, with the corporation and with the group. Results generally confirm that these dimensions, once elaborated to consider more recent detailed research, provide explanations for differences in ethical attitudes among national groups. This study points the way to further investigations based on cultural explanations of differences in managers' ethical attitudes and behaviour.