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Universalizability and Reciprocity in International Business Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

John Hendry
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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
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , July 1999 , pp. 405 - 420
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1999

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