Cultural Differences in Ethical Decision Making by Chieh-Yu Lin - Essay Example

For the purpose of this study, the authors use samples of accounting students from 2 different countries, the US and Taiwan. The study aims to examine how culture affects the ethical decision-making power of accounting students specifically. The four dimension model used with MES revealed that US students were more motivated to use egoism for decision making in the given 3 scenarios. On the other hand, Taiwanese students used the deontology dimension. Relativism is often ignored by the US students, whereas, Taiwanese students gave it more consideration in one of the scenarios presented. Individualism is a leading concept in US culture. Hence, it can be related to the egoism that is apparent in the judgments of the US students. Taiwanese place more emphasis on uncertainty avoidance for rules and contracts; hence, deontology in the Taiwanese ethical judgments is expected as per their cultural practices. Hence, the study achieves its aim of concluding that there, indeed, is a relationship between ethical judgments and cultural differences.