Business Ethics Across Cultures
XMGT/216
May 24, 2015
Diane Garvey

Business Ethics Across Cultures The first article I read was about business ethics in China. According to this article, the Chinese value gifts and actually see them as a form of respect by the person giving the gift. Chinese people also believe in sages rather than a single God and they believe everything should be in harmony. These people place a special emphasis and are even dependent on the relationships of relatives and friends while attaching importance to the feelings of others. They see all relationships as lifetime commitments. In China, privacy is not highly valued, as they tend to work in groups rather than individually. This culture is made up of introverts who would rather sit in silence with courtesy, which is highly valued, rather than confront an issue. In marketing and advertising, the Chinese tend to value inner beauty and wisdom over looks and exaggerations. Chinese people do not like touching and actually avoid eye contact as a form of respect for one’s personal space. When making a deal or negotiating any business with the Chinese people, it is inevitable that such meetings will be carried out over food and drinks as they work to form lasting friendships with the people they do business with. Since they do not like the pressure of making strictly contractual arrangements, they avoid doing this over a meal. By eating with potential partners, it takes some of the focus off of contracts and pressures and offers both parties the ability to relax and think while discussing. There is not a real sense of urgency in this culture. Also, the Chinese don’t place a lot of weight on carrying out all the terms of a contract as they view a contract to be more of a symbol of a relationship. When working with the Chinese, the ability to be empathetic could be extremely beneficial as this culture communicates more through actions, body language, and tone of voice.
The second article I reviewed was on Australia. This country seems to be riddled with contradictions. They prefer cheap, foreign, short term workers rather that the more expensive yet lasting employment of an Australian employee. They have been known to participate in the covering up of pollution and bribing the government in order to approve developments that are not in the interest of the communities in which those developments would affect, yet they have a government legislated code of business ethics that is aimed to preserve the environment and encourage biodiversity. It sounds to me like Australia has a way of telling the people what sounds good yet there is no follow through. The Australian government is more interested in getting things done rather than making sure that these things are in the best interest of the citizens and environment. According to their code of ethics, they value social and ethical responsibility. They are committed to the Australian nation and place a high emphasis on Australians contributing to Australia by only purchasing and consuming products and goods that are made in Australia. Their code of ethics states that they value honesty and accurate representation of goods sold as well. Australians strive to be respectful, courteous, and environmentally responsible while reaching for environmental and economic growth targets. Australia invests in community programs and works to maintain effective and appropriate security practices and policies in order to protect the personal information of employees and customers of its business organizations.
After reading both of these articles, I would have to say that Australia is most in line with the United States. I may be a pessimist when it comes to our country but I see many parallels there. While the United States claims to value American made products, we outsource almost everything. Most of our products are made in China and even the things we do assemble here where actually made in other countries. An example would be a lot of our automobiles. Chevrolet and Ford are all supposedly assembled in the United States, but the majority of the parts the go into these vehicles are made in China and sent here for assembly. Another example I can think of is customer service via telephone. It seems that every time I call a customer service line, be it for my cell phone, or “American made” apparel that I purchase online, I always find myself speaking to someone from another country who can barely speak English. Also, the Australian government seems to cut corners in order to better serve its own agenda regardless of the environmental affects that doing such things would have on the people of its nation and the environment. In my opinion, our government does the same thing in the United States. Our President is constantly “fast tracking” bills in order to bypass the standard process of presentation to the public and sometimes the senate and congress in order to fulfill his own agenda. These actions are reckless and could have potentially devastating consequences, but “we the people” don’t know for sure because so much is hidden from us. A great example of this would be the transpacific partnership (TPP) bill that our President has been working so hard to get passed without the consent of anyone other than himself. We have not been granted the ability to fully read the terms of this bill, but from what little I have been able to read about it, this bill is good for the short term but has the potential to ruin us as an individual nation while substantiating the accusations that Obama is actually looking to form a one world order. To add my own personal experience to this, I would have to say that working with the Australians was a lot like working with other Americans. They value a sense of humor and straight forward attitudes. In my dealings with the Australians, they were extremely outgoing and friendly. There was one instance, however, that a colleague of mine upset one of them by constantly bringing up the topic of their accent. Even then the issue was sternly addressed and easily resolved. I found these people to be trustworthy and hard working. Like Americans, sometimes they slacked off or failed to take things as seriously as I needed them to at the time, but things always came together and working with them was a pleasure and always a riot. I never laughed so much at work as I did when I was communicating with that group of people.

The people of China, in a lot of ways, seem to be the polar opposites of the people of the United States. The United States marketing strategies focus on research, world class product development, competitive and appropriate pricing, motivating promotional tactics, and efficient and appropriate distribution. Our nation is much more outgoing and “in your face” so to speak regarding sales and distribution. Our nation works to make people believe they need more. As long as the people never feel they have enough, they will continue to consume and spend money. Our nation is one of materialistic, extroverted, vain, individualistic, and loud. The Chinese culture is calm, serene, quiet, introverted, team oriented, and sentimental. It is safe to say that If I were ever to take on the challenge of globalization with my own company, I would probably have an extremely difficult time attempting to relate with this culture. I, as an American, was raised that eye contact is essential, especially in the instance of making a good first impression. When I consider someone to be my friend, I hug them and I am loud and outspoken. If something bothers me, I have no problem voicing that and making my feelings known. One of the only similarities between out ethical practices and that of the Chinese is that courtesy is noted as an essential tool of communication. Even then though, our idea of courtesy is much different than the Chinese idea of courtesy. In China, they live by the saying that the “rule of man outweighs rule of law”. While in the United States, we are conditioned to value the rule of law over the rule of man. I worked as factory liaison for a time where I was responsible for communicating with our factories both in Shanghai and Tokyo. Both factories spoke in English, but with the time differences, most of our communication was via email. I did not mind communicating with the factory in Shanghai as they were always courteous, brief, and to the point. Although, my communications with them were sometimes quite boring as they seemed to have no sense of humor as I know it. There were no jokes, no expressive punctuation, nothing. Working with them sometimes felt like I was working with machines.
In any event, it is eye opening to understand how different other cultures view the world and ethics.

REFERENCES

Ethical issues across cultures: managing the differing perspectives of China and the USA Dennis A. Pitta, Hung-Gay Fung, Steven Isberg, URL = http://home.ubalt.edu/ntsbpitt/ethics.pdf

Ethics for Australian Business
Vivian Roberts, URL = http://www.natalt.org/2010/01/29/ethics-for-australian-business/