Business Ethics Across Cultures: China and Brazil - Essay Example

? Business Ethics Across Cultures: China and Brazil Due Business Ethics Across Cultures: China and Brazil Companies often build their images to reflect how they conduct business. The most powerful companies in the world understand that their business practices can se them up for success or failure. Ethics play an important roles in business practices because they guide the actions of a company and determine how a company conducts business with other companies. When the ethics perspectives vary between nations, business relations can easily become strained between companies within those nations. This paper explores the ethical perspectives of China and Brazil by exploring business articles about the ethics of each country and how they affect the country’s business practices. The paper then contains a discussion of how the perspectives of China and Brazil affect the global business ethics perspective and how China and Brazil’s perspectives compare to the United States’ ethical perspective. China The first article refers to the business ethics in China and their philosophy when it comes to practicing business. According to Miriam Schulman (2006), the Chinese believe that in order to be a World Power in business, they must discard corrupt business practices. As a matter of fact, the corruption in China is so prevalent that Schulman has found, “Many students at the Beijing University of International Business and Economics, where CIBE is based, are pursuing an MBA because they are frustrated (para. 2).” The article shows that China is growing into a world power, and the business practices they implement during their ascension will affect the entire world. China, however, is not interested in taking advice from Western business practices and would rather structure their own business ethics philosophy based on their own goals and strategies. The article pointed out that many countries criticize China for their questionable business ethics but then ignore instances when Chinese contractors exhibit questionable business practices in their company. China’s defense is to point out that it is not the only foreign country with ethical issues in its business practices. Some of the issues in the ethics dynamic for China include favoritism among family and close friends (Schulman, 2006). Some say this is a result of Chinese cultural traditions, which reflect similar favoritisms. Schulman finds a textbook by a writer familiar with Chinese traditions and philosophies. In this textbook, the author uses case studies and examples to develop a list of 18 international business ethics guidelines. Brazil The second article refers to the business Ethics of the South American country of Brazil. The article comes from a business magazine called Ethisphere which focuses on the business ethics and compliance with global business standards . In each issue, the magazine highlights a different global company and analyzes the company’s business practice in regards to its ethical standards and performance. For it’s September 2008 issue, Ethisphere chose to highlight Brazil because of it’s fifth largest population and 10th largest economy in the world (Arreola, 2008). According to the article, Brazil has faced many bureaucratic and systematic difficulties, including political corruptness that has slowed the country’s progression. Brazil has been working to make a change in its political practices, which in the past have included questionable practices, especially in the business capitols of the country that hold global business ties (Arreola, 2008). Businesses entering into partnerships with Brazilian companies are warned to pay attention to the cultural concepts and ethical challenges that arise in business transactions with Brazilian companies. The article points to a certain ethical concept Brazilians call Jeitinhio Brasileiro. Literally translated, this means, “giving someone a break” (Arreola, 2008, para. 4). In business practices, this concept basically means that rigid rules and restrictions are altered or other options are given for completing a requirement as a gesture of empathy. This can become bribery if not carefully monitored by companies in business with Brazilian entities (Arreola, 2008). Taxation, employment, and registration regulations are being brought to the forefront of the country’s focus on removing corruption in its business practices. There is also a growing concern about violations of piracy and copyright rules. Drug trafficking has also been stated as an issue because some of the money business are working with is considered “dirty money” (Arreola, 2008). Comparison Based on the information given in these two articles, each country has an ethical perspective that guides its business practices. From the articles, we can see that both China and Brazil have faced issues regarding corruption in business practices leading to questionable actions on the parts of companies in these countries. Both countries can attribute much of the issues with ethical corruption to political issues in the country and at least a small influence from their cultural traditions as well. However, both companies recognize the presence of corruption in the business sectors and have began implementing policies and regulations to change ethical practices of the companies into responsible and fair business partners. Both companies recognize fair ethics as an important tool to becoming a major world power economically and they are altering their business practices to reflect a fair partner image. While China has a clear idea of its business practices and ethical standards, Brazil is still struggling with business practices that seem fair inside the country, but will most likely be considered highly inappropriate in other countries, such as bribery and drug trafficking. Global Impact The articles contribute to a global understanding of business ethics because they provide details about which ethical behaviors are considered appropriate in each country. This gives insight into how ethical perspectives vary between countries, giving the reader an idea of the diversity of the countries’ business policies and how wide the global perspective has to reach to cover the business perspectives of hundreds of countries. While many of the business practices between the countries coincide with their foreign partners, there are several instances where one country’s policies don’t align with another’s. We see evidence of this in these two articles, where each country is focused on the ethical issues it sees as the most important issues, but the country’s do not agree on what the most important issues are. In these cases, the ethical guidelines must be discussed and decided in advance to ensure positive business relations occur. Because the policies vary so greatly, the global ethical perspective must remain broad, and more streamlined guidelines have to be created between countries on a case by case basis when international business partnerships are formed. Close to Home The business ethics of these China and Brazil share similarities and differences with the business ethics of the United States. While Chinese traditions place emphasis on family ties which transfer into their business practices, the United States places a firm restriction on showing favoritism in business transactions that reflect anything other than professional aptitude. However, like the Chinese, the United States suffers from issues with tax evasion and other fraudulent business practices. Brazil deals with issues involving drug trafficking and bribery, while the United States considers both of these practices to be strictly forbidden in business transactions. However, like Brazil, the United States faces the issue of political corruption and bureaucratic influence on business practices. The United States carries a pretty strict policy and regulation on business practices, but that does not prevent issues from happening due to companies that overlook the policies and regulations in an attempt to make generate higher profits. Corruption is something every country faces, but having a clear idea of business ethics helps regulate and prevent issues when international business partnerships are formed. Conclusion The differences between the business ethics perspectives of China and Brazil give evidence that the perspectives between countries on different continents can vary greatly. China’s dependence on family traditions and its favoritism toward family and close friends could jeopardize business relationships with countries that favor an unbiased or neutral business practice. Brazil has many issues with vague expectations when it comes to following regulations, and even accepts bribes in some cases. This could be considered unethical to countries that expect the original agreement to remain in place no matter how strict the regulations are. Differences such as these force the global business ethical perspective to widen in order to encompass and respect the views of all countries. However, this presents a challenge to countries that are developing international business partnerships with different perspectives. The companies must work together to create a clear guideline of the expectations in business practices when forming new partnerships, to encourage fair, positive business relations between companies. Only when the companies are in agreement can a mutually positive business transaction occur that results in the most profit for all involved parties involved. References Arreola, F. & Unruh, G. (2008). Global compliance-Brazil. Retrieved from http://ethisphere.com/global-compliance-brazil/ Schulman, M. (2006). Business Ethics in China. Retrieved from http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/ethicalperspectives/business-china.html Read More