Ethical Conflicts in International Business

2. Background:

Some of authors have been said about Cross Cultural intelligence and Ethical Conflicts. E.g. David C. Thomas and Kerr Inkson defined “cultural intelligence: People work for the Global Work place” is a representative sample of publications concerning Cultural Intelligence. Scholl hammer (1977) discussed the need for international codes of conduct to govern cross-cultural activities. When expatriate managers return before the official completion of there overseas assignments the stress and low job satisfaction resulting from culture shock is often blamed (Newman et al., 1978).

Due to drastic growth of globalisation expatriates managers commonly are seen in many of the multinational organisations. The vital aspect in the segment should be focused on cultural adjustments between different nationality managers. This can be supported by saying that different nations have different cultural aspects. The diverse cultural aspects are the main causes for the confronting situations. The business organisations are in action across different borders of the world. The international organisations consider whether a particular issue is right or wrong due to the bridging gap between the different countries.

Cultural relativity is a very waste theory in different countries perceptions. What may be considered right in one culture turned out to be unethical in another. Some argue that the country in which the business is that culture is the one to be followed. All the countries vary in many different aspects like economical, environmental, cultural, ethical values, linguistical and so on. Thus all these barriers which are mentioned make the cultural conflicts. The right business manager is the one who balances between the barriers and the flawless business operations. This entirely depends upon the managerial capabilities. These can be successed by different alternative strategies though one cannot particularly describe a single strategy which is suitable for everyone.

One of the valid and required method is to make greater in the cross cultural solutions to international business is communication and interaction with in company and between companies, between organisations and clients and between co-workers.

Now days cross cultural consultancies have been participating to solve the conflicts and risks in the cultural organisations. Cross cultural consultancies therefore concentrate their efforts on interpersonal communication.

“Diversity of cultures and cultural backgrounds between a highly various staff base leads with it difficulties and risks. Cross cultural differences reveal general areas such as in behaviour, etiquette, norms, values, expressions, group mechanics and non-verbal communication. These cross cultural differences then follow on through to high level areas such as management styles, corporate culture, marketing, HR and PR”.

(http://ezinearticles.com/?Cross-Cultural-Solutions-for-International-Business&id=482)

In order to overcome these conflicts, every company need to have specialist concentration is required in the form of a cross cultural professional. One example like an accountant to examine finances, in that way a cross cultural expert know-how to reduce cultural conflicts and provide better solutions to interpersonal cultural differences.

Within organisations there are many angles in which cultural differences manifest. Some of organisation areas which cross cultural specialists deal with include, but are not exclusive to, the following:

Human Resource Department:

HR will take care of employee’s recruitment process, employee’s transfers, overseas projects, employee’s salary decisions and training sessions. These are all covers a wide range of business critical areas that need cross cultural analysis.

Group-Building:

Every company would like to perform very well. So for that if the cross cultural specialist provide advices and procedures to improve staff integration, minimize cross cultural conflicts and create team spirit.

Knowledge or awareness Training:

When we are working with different cultural background customers or clients, every company will face problems. So for that company should conduct the awareness training programmes on values, customs, country and religion. As a result we can minimize the cultural misunderstandings and mistakes.

Training for Expat:

Sometimes company staff required to travel abroad to gain the knowledge about host country history, culture, customs, beliefs, business methods social formalities. Which are promote to reduce the impact of culture conflicts.

Public Relation Department:

Public relation cover the company brand name, image and advertising campaigns and all areas of organisations should be alert. Because the brand name, image and advertising campaigns which are acceptable to target country cultures.

Language and communication skills programme:

One of the main cause is to lead the cross cultural conflicts in the business is language and communication skills problem in the staff. By providing the linguistic and communication skills knowledge to staff, we can bridge cultural gaps.

Above all the key solutions are currently have been following by business organisations to decrease the cultural conflicts.

3. Research Objectives:

The aim of the proposed research is to:

* Develop an attractive environment in the multi cultural organisations.

* Develop the solutions to bridge the cultural conflicts gaps in the international business.

* The actual response of satisfaction from the employees in the multi cultural organisation.

4. Research Method:

The main aim of the research method is how you express about accomplish your research goals. Mainly the research method divided into two parts. Those are Research design and Data collection. Here in my proposal I am going to take a part of research design.

4.1. Research design:

It contains where you would like to implement the research. And the research is a single organisation or else a part of a division of organisation. In this part we need to explain what kind of way you intend to bring out the research. E.g. On a questionnaire, interviews, case studies etc. And we need to explain which divisions, why you select these divisions as well as we need to explain the identity of our research people e.g. managers, workers and officials. And why we choose this people.

The study undertaken to access the problems of conflict management in a cross cultural settings and get the feedback regarding their experiences from the existing employees in the multi cultural organisations and as a result of them we need to minimize their conflicts from their existing employees.

Conduct a review of the literatures on employee involvement and the diversity of cultures in order to improve research hypothesis.

Carry out primary research in three American owned IT companies in India to judge the opinions of Indian employees and their managers towards values underpinning employee involvement. An IT companies are chosen because the occupations carried out in these organisations are likely to be similar. Thus ensuring that any cultural differences are a function of Indian culture rather than of occupational culture.

Research procedure:

The questionnaire is uniquely designed to aid the research method in order to come to a conclusion. It contains various types of questions having different characteristics from cognitive nature, so as to obtain a multiple opinion in the given study. So below mentioned are few of those question samples:

1. What were the key issues which are observed during each overseas project?

2. Which are the cultural differences you faced most challenging?

3. What kind of training did was given from your organisations?

4. Which personal strengths did you find most helpful during your overseas assignments?

The questions in the questionnaire will seek to test these hypothesis. The questionnaire will be distributed to a sample of employees and of managers across all three Companies.

Sources of Data:

A classification of data is very important procedure in this concept. The collected data can be classified into two types.

1. Primary data

2. Secondary data

Primary Data:

The primary data is very important source for to make suggestions to the title obtained. This data can be collected in various methods like survey, interviewing, feedback, i.e. Group Discussion etc., for collection of primary data the survey method is used, which involved predetermined questions. The structured questionnaire contained a form list of question framed so as to get the facts. But it involves high risk and huge expensive method to get the facts.

Secondary Data:

Collection of secondary data is very easy compared with primary data. But this data is also very important for the growth of an organization; Secondary data is collected from the company journals, magazines, broachers & websites.

Sample universe:

The survey will give the complete picture of the area of the research. Sample frame/unit: professionals, business people, employees etc, who are working in the multi cultural organisations.

Sample size: the total sample size is 100 only.

Sample method:

The information is planned to be collected by sample method, the sample method followed is random sampling method. The probability random sampling method is stratified random sampling. The reasons for selecting simple random method are accurate and easily accessible, if we have sufficient time better to go for face to face interview, if the sample size is large its cost is high.

5. Time scale:

6. Conclusion:

It is clear that in any multinational companies ethics are more important which plays a vital role in any organization. By understanding these aspects we have come across many issues where every company is facing different type of cross-cultural ethics. In my literature review of cross-cultural conflicts in international business I have found how managers have to face ethical issues in cross-culture business environment.

So however all these issues in cross-cultural business environment are being pointed out by every manager’s when they are doing host country projects, and many issues were researched by many authors and scholars and they try to make them better by bringing them into the real world.

7. Resources:

I have been used the resources from saunders book, journals and articles.