152 Part 2 The Cultural Environment of Global Markets attention as well.59 One study showed that companies with at least one woman director are 40 percent less likely to need to restate quarterly and annual earnings.60 So what about our female Ford executive mentioned at the start of the chapter? She was having no fun in Japan when we left her story. However, by all accounts (from peers, super-visors, and even Japanese counterparts) that first encounter was not representative of her continuing successes with the Japanese. She attributes her subsequent effectiveness to the strong support of her male Ford team members and her own recognition of the importance of building personal relationships with the Japanese. She explains: My husband, also a Ford manager working with Japanese clients, and I decided to have a few of our Mazda associates over for an “All-American” dinner during their next trip to Detroit. So, we started out inviting three people to our home. We thought this would be a nice intimate way to get to know one another and provide the Japanese with an honest-to-goodness homemade American meal. By the eve of the dinner word had gotten out and we had thirteen for dinner. They sort of invited themselves, they changed their meetings around, and some even flew in from the Chicago Auto Show. We had a wonderful time and for the first time they saw me as a person. A mom and a wife as well as a business associate. We talked about families, some business, not particulars, but world economics and the auto industry in general. The dinner party was a key turning point in my relationships with Mazda.61 Business Ethics The moral question of what is right or appropriate poses many dilemmas for domestic market-ers. Even within a country, ethical standards are frequently not defined or always clear. The problem of business ethics is infinitely more complex in the international marketplace because value judgments differ widely among culturally diverse groups.62 That which is commonly accepted as right in one country may be completely unacceptable in another, though at least one study has shown relative consistency across 41 countries in the ethics of persuading supe-riors. 63 Giving business gifts of high value, for example, is generally condemned in the United States, but in many countries of the world, gifts are not only accepted but also expected.64 59For example, see Estefania Santacreu-Vasut, Oded Shankar, and Amir Shoham, “Linguistic Gender Marking and its International Business Ramifications,” Journal of International Business Studies 45 (2014), pp. 1170–78; K. Praveen Parboteeah, Martin Hoegl, and John B. Cullen, “Managers’ Gender Role Attitudes: A Country Institutional Profile Approach,” Journal of International Business Studies 39, no. 5 (2008), pp. 795–813; William Newburry, Liuba Y. Belkin, and Paradis Ansari, “Perceived Career Opportunities from Globalization Capabilities and Attitudes towards Women in Iran and the U.S.,” Journal of International Business Studies 39, no. 5 (2008), pp. 814–32. 60 Melissa Korn, “Maybe Math Isn’t So Hard,” The Wall Street Journal, November 28, 2012, p. B.6. 61Hodgson, Sano, and Graham, Doing Business with the New Japan. 62Pallab Paul, Abhijit Roy, and Kausiki Mukjhopadhyay, “The Impact of Cultural Values on Marketing Ethical Norms: A Study in India and the United States,” Journal of International Marketing 14 (2006), pp. 28–56; Jatinder J. Singh, Scott J. Vitell, Jamal Al-Khatif, and Irvine Clark III, “The Role of Moral Intensity and Personal Moral Philosophies in the Ethical Decision Making of Marketers: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of China and the United States,” Journal of International Marketing 15 (2007), pp. 86–112; Srivatsa Seshadri and Greg M. Broekemier, “Ethical Decision Making: Panama-United States Differences in Consumer and Marketing Contexts,” Journal of Global Marketing 22 (2009), pp. 299–311. 63David A. Ralston, Carolyn P. Egri, Maria Teresa de la Garza Carranza, and Prem Ramburuth, and 44 colleagues, “Ethical Preferences for Influencing Superiors: A 41 Society Study,” Journal of International Business Studies 40 (2009), pp. 1022 – 45. 64See http://www.ethics.org and http://www.business-ethics.org for more pertinent information. LO4 The importance of cultural differences in business ethics Indeed, consistent with the discussions about language, the meaning of the word corruption varies considerably around the world. In formerly communist countries where Marxism was an important part of the educational system for many, profits can be seen as a kind of corruption. What American managers view as essential, others view as a sign of exploita-tion. The individualism so important to Americans can also be seen as a kind of corruption. The Japanese have an expression: “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.” In India many attribute the decline in the society there to the rampant consumerism, such as that promoted on MTV. Of course, such rampant consumerism is what kept the American econ-omy afloat right after the turn of the century. In some countries, there is no greater Satan Corruption Defined
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