International Business Ethics - Essay Example

Therefore, business leaders and executives should critically evaluate their business circumstances, especially for those involving specific cross-cultural situations, in order to avoid applying ethnocentrism, which may jeopardize business transactions. For instance, one of the parties to the business contract may pull away if he or she feels considered as a junior partner to the contract due to his or her culture or religion (Egger, 2008). Ethical relativism is a similar practice to ethnocentrism whereby an individual tends to make ethical choices based on what he or she feels is reasonable or right in accordance with an individual’s own value system or belief.

Globalization intensified the interaction of different cultures across the world. This demands that business leaders, as well as executives, apply considerable accommodation to new cultures and beliefs whenever dealing with cross-cultural business transactions to avoid offending the other party to the contract or business deal. In most circumstances, business leaders use language barriers as a basis to judge other cultures, e.g. the fact that English is the international language in the world does not mean that those who do not know the language do not have anything valuable to offer.

Therefore, it is necessary to apply considerable accommodation to such cultural differences in order to foster understanding, e.g. hiring an interpreter to mediate between them during a business transaction (Guffey, Rhodes & Rogin, 2008). International business ethics refers to the standardized cord of ethics or norms that guides the conduct of transacting businesses in an international field. Due to the conflicting provisions of cultures as well as religions across the world, businesses have to adhere to the set cord of ethics while doing international business in order to facilitate smooth transactions across various cultures.

Furthermore, international business ethics enables the companies as well as their representatives and agents to stay above ethnocentrism or ethical relativism. However, global leaders, as well as guardians of international trade such as the United Nations, have a stipulated set of recognized norms that businesses have to abide by, such as the UN Global Impact. This provision enables businesses to engage professionally when confronted with cross-cultural business circumstances as well as maintain cordial business relations with their partners (Jhingran, 2001).

Some of the common aspects of international business ethics include: Environment-friendly technologies Eradicating corruption, extortion, and bribery Promote environmental responsibility. Eliminate employment discrimination. Eliminate forced and compulsory labour. Eradicate child labour and slavery. Foster international cooperation. Despite the need to conform to international business ethics, there are situations that require business executives as well as marketing professionals to apply local culture when determining their ethical practices.

This is especially in cases where the business transaction has a lot more sentimental value as compared to its commercial value. Take for instance in a business transaction that involves dealing with antiques and traditional artefacts such as monuments, curving, drawings and idols. These artefacts have a certain protocol of handling them, failure to which it may cast an evil omen on the business transaction. Some religious artefacts, as well as cultural antiques, have specific procedures of handling them, e.g. the Ark of the Covenant under the Judaic religious faction (Egger, 2008).