Ethical and Cultural Issues Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Ethical and Cultural Issues - Essay Example Many people tend to believe that business is business and it is about standardized business practices that happen to be same around the world. They think that the relevance of culture in business is overrated. However, nothing could be far from the truth. The thing that needs to be understood is that every business system happens to evolve around a culture and is significantly influenced by the cultural norms and beliefs (Johnson & Turner, 2007). Thereby while undertaking business operations in foreign nations, it is quiet feasible to offend people from a different business culture, without even intending to actually do so. Yet, it is also a fact that even if one agrees to the fact that business systems do get influenced by culture, it is difficult to ascertain as to how much one should know about a culture while engaging in business with it. There is no definite answer. Certainly, cultural knowhow is important, yet more important is the attitude of the managers managing business in a foreign culture (Johnson & Turner, 2007). ... A manager working in a foreign culture also needs to retain an attitude that is caring about the society in which one operates. For instance while doing business in China, a manager needs to remember that the Chinese society is highly shaped and moulded by traditional Confucian values that affiliate to a strict sense of propriety and norms (Alon, 2007). It is these norms and values that determine as to how a person ought to operate, act and behave while dealing with a range of social hierarchies. In addition, it is a fact that the Chinese tend to maintain little separation between their business life and personal life, and each business decision tends to have a personal context (Alon, 2007). One important thing to be understood is that the concepts of ‘mianzi’ and ‘guanxi’ happen to highly influence the business ethics in China. Guanxi happens to be a system of business connections, contacts, networks and relations that is really complex and deeply imbedded (Alon, 2007). These connections are formed over decades and happen to run deep. Mianzi is affiliated to the concept of face and in a broader term it could be interpreted as a concern for one’s personal self respect and self respect of the others (Alon, 2007). Hence, while dealing with ethical issues in China a manager always needs to remember that no concern for ethics may supersede the notions of guanxi and mianzi. The Chinese notion of ethics is flexible in the sense that while deciding about ethics it does tends to show consideration for personal relationships and the onus of allowing others to save their sense of face, even if it involves somewhat