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Revisiting the Global Business Ethics Question

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Christopher Michaelson
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Abstract:

A fundamental question of global business ethics is, “When moral business conduct standards conflict across borders, whose standards should prevail?” Western scholarship and practice tends to depict home country standards as “higher” or more “restrictive” or “well-ordered” than the “lower” standards of emerging market actors. As much as the question appears culturally neutral, many who ask it do so with a culturally-specific lens shaped by prevailing conditions of Western economic strength. However, the dominant economic powers of the future are not likely to be the same North American and Western European markets that have reigned supreme in the recent past. As corporations increasingly re-examine their political roles in global governance, we need also to re-examine the moral authority of global ethical norms so they do not merely reflect the dominant ideologies of the most economically powerful market actors.

Type
Responses to BEQ’s Special Issue on the Changing Role of Business in Global Society
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , April 2010 , pp. 237 - 251
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2010

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