Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T01:42:07.755Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Universalizability and Reciprocity in International Business Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Abstract:

Most writers on international business ethics adopt a universalist perspective, but the traditional expression of problems in terms of a discrepancy between (superior) home country and (inferior) host country values makes it difficult to preserve the symmetry required by a universalizability criterion. In this paper a critique of Donaldson’s (1989) theory is used to illustrate some of the ways in which ethnocentric assumptions can enter into a supposedly universalist argument. A number of suggestions are then made for improving Donaldson’s approach by careful attention to the requirement of universalizability, expressed in a contractarian theory in the form of agent symmetry or reciprocity.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bowie, Norman. 1991. Moral decision-making and multinationals. Business Ethics Quarterly 1: 223232.Google Scholar
De George, Richard T. 1993. Competing with Integrity in International Business. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Donaldson, Tom. 1989. The Ethics of International Business. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Elfstrom, Gerard. 1991. Moral Issues and Multinational Corporations. New York: St. Martin’s Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. 1990. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. 1996. On the cognitive content of morality. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99: 335358.Google Scholar
Hare, R. M. 1981. Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method and Point. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1967. A Short History of Ethics. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1988. Whose Justice? Which rationality? London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
O’Neill, Onora. 1996. Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructive Account of Practical Reasoning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1972. A Theory of Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Velasquez, Manuel. 1995. International business ethics: the aluminium companies in Jamaica. Business Ethics Quarterly 5: 865882.Google Scholar
Wong, David. 1984. Moral Relativity. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar