There is an anecdote about Christianity entering Africa, attributed to Archbishop Desmond Tutu (although the current author has also seen it attributed to Jomo Kenyatta), which goes like this.

The introduction of Islam to Africa (eighth and ninth centuries) certainly predates Christianity's introduction, and, although the dynamics of its introduction may differ in detail, the basic process of its being introduced alongside political, economic and military ambitions is likely to have been similar. As was seen in Chapter 7, Islam was also disposed towards trade and enterprise, and perhaps towards a proselytizing zeal, like Protestant Christianity, to spread the Word alongside the acquisition and protection of trade routes, the spread of commercial interests, the subjugation in some form of indigenous populations, and assimilation and taking over of existing religious beliefs.

Yet it is unlikely that the ‘foreign invader’ was able to forcibly introduce a foreign religion on local people, if there did not previously exist some predisposition towards religiosity: although Britain's failure to introduce Christianity into India certainly challenges this assumption, so clearly other factors had to be in place.

This book is based on a premise that the concept of ethics, or what constitutes ‘ethicality’ differs across the globe. What is regarded as ethical in one society may not be so regarded in another. This is not a straightforward assumption as it is also possible to assume that there is a universal ethic. For example, it is reasonable to suppose that all societies and cultures have a value which condemns murder and causing unnecessary suffering to other people. It may also be reasonable to suppose that a belief in universal human rights is indeed universal (from the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, and subsequent United Nations declarations), and that this is a useful guide in differentiating what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in a society other than our own. Why this may not be a reasonable assumption is discussed later in Chapter 5.

An assumption of a universality of ethics, as well as an assumption of cultural variation in what constitutes ethicality, does not necessarily provide a contradiction. But it does cause problems for managers operating across different countries.

The current chapter is concerned with why concepts of ethicality differ across the globe: from country to country. A simple cross-cultural approach that explains variation in terms of ‘culture’ is not sufficient. Explaining variation by reference to Hofstede's (1980a/2003) value dimensions, for example, although useful, does not fully answer the question of why there is variation.

It is not possible to explore management ethics in the modern Arab world without focusing on Islam. This is the first chapter in the current book that overtly looks at ethics through a religious lens. As Nanji (1993: 117) says:

These words were penned almost a decade before 9/11 after which so much, but also so little, changed. Issues, such as ‘veiling’ have for many years provoked ethical reactions in the West. Yet antagonisms between the West's perception of Islam and Muslims' reactions to Western-led globalization have been exacerbated by the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, and subsequent US-led military action in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Arab world and Islamic philosophers and scientists have achieved much alongside the growth of civilization in the Middle East together with trade and economic development at a time when Europe was still groping around in the Dark Ages. Islam developed initially in the Arabian peninsular doing much to unify diverse Arab communities, and as a progressive religion did much to overthrow the old tribal ways.

In part, an assumption has been made in the previous chapters, especially Chapter 2, that we live in a global world that can be characterized as post-colonial and neo-colonial. Although management theory, and cross-cultural management theory, have largely ignored geopolitical factors, the nature of the type of power dynamics involved in globalization and its influences on social and organization characteristics worldwide is significant. This does not simply involve, for example, the exploitation of human and natural resources in ‘developing’ countries. There are also major implications for population mobility and, as discussed in Chapter 2, for cultural crossvergence and hybridization of organizational and other human forms (such as the family and religious institutions). Not only has Britain's empire, for example, had the consequence of large numbers of Britons distributed around the world in what used to be her colonies (including the United States), the UK is now a multiculturally diverse nation. This is not simply a consequence of its own empire, and its subsequent breakdown, but more recently a result of the breakdown of the Soviet Empire, and new additions to the European Union. Britain can no longer be regarded as a cultural monolith.

This of course applies to the United States. Starting its modern history as a destination for European and other immigrants, its international activities have greatly increased its reach and attraction for immigration. China may also be a future magnet for immigration.

In the last chapter differences in cultural values, and their possible connections with ethical values, were discussed. This was premised on such differences in cultural values not providing an explanation for differences in ethical values, but ethics being a subset of values. Hence national cultural values provide a context for discussing ethics and ethicality, but not an explanation of why there are differences in ethical values, as many studies try to argue (Jackson, 2001).

The decision of a multinational company to lay off considerable numbers of employees in a subsidiary may be judged differently from culture to culture. Higher levels of loyalty expected of a company for its employees in collectivist countries such as Japan and Korea (Bae and Chung, 1997) may provide the context for such differences. Similarly the degree of loyalty expected from employees to their company may differ across cultures on the basis of the degree to which collectivism is focused on the corporation (Hui, 1990), or the extent to which individualism prevails in a culture (Hofstede, 1980a/2003) and employees have a calculative or instrumental regard towards their organizations. Also, the extent to which group members may rally around a disadvantaged colleague when threatened with dismissal and the degree to which a manager should go along with this could differ according to the extent to which collectivism is focused on the group (Hui, 1990) or on the level of egalitarian commitment (Schwartz, 1994) which is evident in an individualistic society (see Table 4.1).

‘Culture’ in the last chapter was seen as ‘that complex whole which involves knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law, customs and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’ (Tylor, 1871); or, the ‘human-made part of the environment’ (Herskovits, 1948). This was distinguished, after Goody (1994), from the narrower concept of culture as being purely symbolic, or rather, excluding other ‘human-made’ parts of the environment and, after Sorge (2004), distinguishing between a culturalist and institutionalist position. In other words, institutions as part of ‘culture’ are created by sentient human beings in interaction interpersonally, interorganizationally and internationally. They are both part of the meaning systems through which people conduct their lives, as well as being created and supported by those meaning systems. Chapter 2 also discussed the relationship between ‘rules’ and ‘values’. Again the two concepts interrelate. Rules are created out of, and supported by value systems. Yet rules also shape the values that people have. This is an essential part of comprehending the concept of ‘interfaces’ in cross-cultural understanding and analysis.

‘Rules’ (or the way we are supposed to do things around here) may be imposed on a local population, whether this be a society or an organization. This could be a management system, for example. A foreign company acquiring a local firm as its subsidiary may impose a management system comprising rules about decision making that are different to those the local staff and managers are used to.

In Chapter 1 I alluded to Neil Brady's book Ethical Managing: Rules and Results. The cover of his book portrays an image of the Roman god Janus. Indeed he uses a ‘Janus-headed view’ as a metaphor for his rules (looking back – deontological) and results (looking forward – teleological) approach to ethics. Janus is the god of doorways, beginnings and endings. The month of January, the beginning of the new year, is named after him. He is always depicted with two heads, one looking backwards, the other looking forwards. Brady (1990: 62) tells us that ‘this view portrays the social process of resolving ethical issues simultaneously looking to the past as well as to the future’. His distinction between utilitarians as the forward-looking ethicists and the ‘formalists’ as the backward-looking ones, may still be slightly too simplistic, yet does provide the basis for viewing how tradition links with change, and how we must incorporate these two fundamental views when making an ethical decision. Ethical decision making is all about making sense of ambiguity, by trying to understand what has led to where we are; then taking risks, making a leap in the dark almost, by taking some kind of action based on what has worked in the past, and your estimation of what the results of your action will be. Often, the making sense of ambiguity might involve considering religious precepts, as we saw in Chapter 7.

Europe, as it exists at the beginning of the twenty-first century, is a ­product of multiple and complex influences that are often encapsulated in the word ‘globalization’. The current author's first intention was to write two chapters, one on West European countries, and one on Eastern and Central European or ‘post-soviet’ ones. Although there would have been some justification for this in terms of very recent history, put in the context of an evolving colonial and intra-European dynamic over the last few centuries this seems rather an artificial division. Even in the last ten years, the term ‘post-soviet’ has really lost its immediacy and relevance. However, to lump a whole continent together in one chapter, where one chapter per country could be justified, seems an enormous task. Yet the quest of this book is to look more at the international dynamics of cross-cultural management ethics, to eschew simple comparison, but to also consider rich description/data from specific countries, and to consider intra-country dynamics. It is of course only possible to do this through considering a limited number of countries in this way, rather than for example the twenty-seven countries that now form the European Union (EU) as well as the European countries that are not within the EU, including Russia (the largest of Europe's total of fifty sovereign states).

Management studies, like education studies, has tended to follow the social and behavioural sciences rather than to lead them. It is true that various streams of critical management and organization studies have developed, but these have largely drawn on developments in sociology or politics or even literary studies. Perhaps compounding the lack of innovation in applied areas such as management, has been the lack of cross-over, and cross-fertilization with other applied areas. For example, in a globalized world, where much of the work of international managers will be in the so-called ‘developing’ countries (which, by the way, take up some 80 per cent of the world's landmass), and within the world as a whole we can talk about living in a largely post-colonial world where North–South geopolitical dynamics have tended to dominate, management studies has very little connection with development studies. If this cross-over does take place, it is within the domain of a rather uncritical modernization theory.

The acceptance of a developing–developed world paradigm is strongly evident within both international management studies, and, regrettably, cross-cultural management. Centre stage to the critical debate should be what promised to be a rising star, auguring major contributions to critical knowledge in the area of international management studies: cross-cultural management.

Although India and South Asia, and East Asia (except Japan) are often lumped together with Africa as ‘developing’ or at least emerging countries, there is often almost a reverence (from the West) towards these regions as being the successors of ancient civilizations. This reverence does not exist for Africa, which is seen as being without history. Nonetheless, much has been written, particularly on China and India, on the problems of business ethics. For example, similar arguments are given for China, as an economy in transition, as they are for say Russia (see Chapter 6), that ‘China today has business ethics issues primarily because its economy is in transition … As the old command economy is replaced by a market-based economy, the rules of the game become less clear, and central authorities have less control’ (Hulpke and Lau, 2008: 59). That this may be an oversimplification is taken up later. In some ways these regions of Asia are seen in the same light as Africa: corruption, nepotism and so on. Yet Said (1978/1995) had pointed to this ambivalence of the West towards the East: not only seeing the ‘Orient’ as backward and primitive, but also seeing it as exotic. He alludes to ‘Oriental despotism, Oriental splendour, cruelty, sensuality’ (2008: 5).