The term “global business” implies not only unprecedented integration of countries through trade, but also an amalgamation of cultural, social, and individual values which influences how corporate decisions should be made to fulfill expectations of shareholders and stakeholders.
The objective of this research is to investigate how business ethics education impacts business students in consideration of differences in cultural and individual values. In pursuit of this goal, the author recruited two groups of senior Taiwanese business students and one group of senior business students from the U.S.A. and conducted a survey-based experiment to measure the influence of culture and business ethics training on the students’ business action decisions. Motivations for this research are twofold. First, much past research adopting solely Hofstede’s classic cultural model to compare international reception of business ethics has generalized a contradictory argument based on false cultural understanding; second, research associating a nation’s specific cultural characters with difficulty in pursuing business ethics has overlooked individuality in the face of questionable business conduct.
The result at the cultural level comparison indicates that, except for behavior associated with bribery, business ethics education indeed creates universal agreement across different business ethical issues between the Taiwanese and American students. The consistency of their decisions and rationales towards questionable business actions suggests that future research should not correlate superficial cultural characters with dissatisfying business ethics standards in certain countries. Rather, scholars need to explore social or individual incentives to encourage business practitioners to think and act ethically.
On the other hand, the comparison of two groups of Taiwan students yielded a dissatisfying but inspiring result: the experience of receiving business education did not cause one group’s decisions to be more ethical than the other. The research’s expectation of business ethics education was not attained; however, this disappointment may encourage greater feedback from experienced business professionals for future efforts in business ethics teaching and research. A pedagogical approach which integrates business professionals may encourage more practical and applicable course design, as well as, facilitate genuine ethical business in an environment, such as Taiwan, where individuals are well-acquainted with the concept and practice of business ethics but encounter daily obstacles to their ability to opt for ethical actions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CHENGCHI/G0097461002 |
| Creators | 林政佑 |
| Publisher | 國立政治大學 |
| Source Sets | National Chengchi University Libraries |
| Language | 英文 |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Rights | Copyright © nccu library on behalf of the copyright holders |
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