When Ethics Travel: The Promise and Peril of Global Business Ethics

The central challenge in managing business ethics in a global economy is to navigate cross-national cultural differences. This article proposes an approach called Integrative Social Contract Theory (ISCT) in order to assist managers in avoiding the perils of both ethical relativism and global ethical uniformity. ISCT allows for tolerance without amoralism. It can be applied to help managers distinguish between those business practices that reflect legitimate differences in local customs—which must be respected —and those which violate hypemorms held by all cultures and organizations. Bribery generally falls into the latter category.