Chapter Overview

Chapter eleven examines two groups of ethical issues that confront international business: the applicability of business managers' own ethical standards in foreign lands and the ethical concerns grouped under the term globalization. The chapter begins by recounting protests held at meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank where the protesters accused these institutions. of promoting economic policies that benefit the industrialized world, not poor nations.

The chapter next examines the issue of whether a persuasive argument can be made that since business can profit by conforming to local ethical practices, that entails a legitimate step to ethical relativism. The question of whether there are values that can reasonably be applied across cultures is debated with a special focus on minimalist and maximalist guidelines for determining the ethical responsibilities of managers in the communities in which they operate. The economic and social problems associated with globalization and international business are identified and debated with particular attention paid to the criticisms that economic decisions and policies of the WTO, IMF, and World Bank along with the practices of international business have a great influence on international affairs even to the point of superseding decisions that should be made by elected officials.

Other criticisms prompted by the underlying general question of whether local national economies are harmed or benefited by globalization and international business are addressed as well: whether, e.g., workers in poor countries are better off with low-paying jobs rather than no jobs at all or whether they are exploited by payment of bare subsistence wages and benefits; that the "race to the bottom" involves incentives to do away with environmental, labor, health and safety regulations; that globalization undermines local government control and self-determination and destroys the cultural integrity of countries hosting international business. The chapter ends with a final reflection on the idea that industrialized and wealthy nations have a duty to help alleviate the effects of poverty in the developing world and have to consider the most appropriate means for accomplishing that goal

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