International Business Chapter 5
The foreign corrupt practices act was amended in order to
Allow for "facilitating payments" The foreign corrupt practices act outlawed the paying of bribes to foreign government officials to gain business. Some U.S. businesses immediately objected that the act would put U.S. firms at a competitive disadvantage. The act was subsequently amended to allow for "facilitating payments"
An american executive of a multinational electronics company finds that one of the company's production units in Thailand employs children to work in its factories. However, most of the children employed at the factory are orphans who will be sold as forced labor or pushed into prostitution of they lose thier jobs. The executive finds that all the available alternatives to remedy this situation seem ethically unacceptable. In this example, the American executive faces
An ethical dilemma. a situation in which none of the available alternatives seems ethically acceptable.
Miller corporation intends to build a new factory in a foreign country. However, the company is having a hard time getting the government to approve the necessary paperwork so construction can begin. to move the process along, Miller Corporation makes legal payments to the government officials. These payments are typically referred to as.
grease payments or speed money are payments to ensure receiving the standard treatment that a business ought to receive from a foreign government but might not due to the obstruction of a foreign official.
As a philosophical approach to business ethics, the righteous moralist approach
is typically associated with managers from developed nations
As a philosophy for business ethics, utilitarianism focuses attention on the need to
weigh carefully all social benefits and costs of a business action.
The practice of "gift-giving" between the parties in a business negotiation is considered right and proper behavior in many Asian cultures. However, some Westerners view the practice as a form of bribery and therefore unethical-particularly if the gifts are substantial. This demonstrated that
what is ethical depends on one's cultural perspective
True or False: Kantian ethics hold that the moral worth of actions or practices is determined by their consequences
False: Kantain ethics hold that people. should be treated as ends and never purely as means to the ends of other. People have dignity and need to be respected as such. The utilitarian approach to ethics holds that the moral worth of actions is determined by their consequences.
True or False: Rico is a naive immoralist, which means he believes a multinational's home-country standards of ethics are the appropriate ones for companies to follow in foreign countries
False: a naive immoralist asserts that if a manager of a multinational sees that firms from other nations are not following ethical norms in a host nation, that manager should not either.
True or False: the convention on combating bribery of foreign public officials in international business transactions obliges member states to make payments to expedite routine government action a criminal offense.
False: the convention on combating bribery of foreign public officials in international business transactions obliges member states and other signatories to make the bribery of foreign public officials a criminal offense. The convention excludes facilitating payments made to expedite routine government action from the convention
True or False: using hofstede's dimensions of social culture, research has shown that companies headquarters in cultures where masculinity and power distance are important attributes were more likely to emphasize the importance of behaving ethically.
False: the study found that enterprises headquartered in cultures where individualism and uncertainty avoidance are strong were more likely to emphasize the importance of behaving ethically than firms headquartered in cultures where masculinity and power distance are important culture attributes. Such analysis suggests that enterprises headquartered in a country such as russia, which scores high on masculinity and power distance measure, and where corruption is endemic, are more likely to engage in unethical behavior than enterprises headquartered in scandinavia.
vanessa wanted to move her company to a state with lower taxes, but was concerned about how that would impact the company's employees. Vanessa is demonstrating the concept of
Moral imagination: this means standing in the shoes of a stakeholder and asking how a proposed decision might impact that stakeholder.
The term _____ refers to the values and norms that are shared among employees of an organization
Organizational Culture
general motors stand against apartheid in south africa was based upon what came to be known as
The Sullivan principles: GM adopted what came to be called the Sullivan principles, he argued that it was ethically justified for GM to operate in south africa so long as two conditions were fulfilled. First, the company should not obey the apartheid laws in its own south african operations. Second, the company should do everything within its power to promote the abolition of apartheid laws.
A pesticide manufacturer has moved its production facility to a foreign country where it is free to dump pollutants into the local waterways. By doing so, this company is contributing to
The global tragedy of the commons. this can happen by moving production to locations where they are free to pump pollutants into the atmosphere or dump them in oceans or rivers, thereby harming these valuable global commons. while such action may be legal, it is still unethical.
The luxury motors corporation moved its automobile production plant to a country in South America because it could freely dump waste products into the nearby ocean. By doing this, the corporation was contributing to the concept of
The tragedy of the commons: this occurs when a resource held in common by all but owned by no one (the ocean) is overused by individuals, resulting in its degradation.
True or False: building an organizational culture that places a high value on ethical behavior requires incentive and reward systems that reward people who engage in ethical behavior.
True: Building an organizational culture that places a high value on ethical behavior requires incentive and reward systems, including promotions that reward people who engage in ethical behavior and sanction those who do not.
True or false: keesha was working in uganda for a multinational firm, and she was told that she would need to bribe government officials if she wanted to get her raw materials on time. She was uncomfortable with this as she had always felt bribes were unethical. This kind of pressure sometimes happens with expatriates who work abroad
True: Home-country managers working abroad in multinational firms may experience more than the usual degree of pressure to violate their personal ethics.
True or False: a company that has a formal statement of the ethical priorities that employees must follow has established a code of ethics.
True: Many companies now draft a code of ethics, which is a formal statement of the ethical priorities a business adheres to. Often, the code of ethics draws heavily upon documents such as the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which itself is grounded in Kantian and rights-based theories of moral philosophy
according to rawls's just distribution theory, all economic goods and services should be distributed equally except when
an unequal distribution would work to everyone's advantage. Justice theories focus on the attainment of a just distribution of economic goods and services. According to Rawls, valid principles of justice are those in which all persons would agree if they could freely and impartially consider the situation. Rawls argues that all economic goods and services should be distributed equally except when an unequal distribution would work to everyone's advantage.
What term refers to the accepted principles of right or wrong governing the conduct of businesspeople
business ethics
