Culture and Ethics
Journal of Business Ethics (2007) 75:273–284
DOI 10.1007/s10551-006-9252-9
Ó Springer 2007
Cultural Values and International Differences Bert Scholtens
Lammertjan Dam in Business Ethics
ABSTRACT. We analyze ethical policies of firms in industrialized countries and try to find out whether culture is a factor that plays a significant role in explaining country differences. We look into the firm’s human rights policy, its governance of bribery and corruption, and the comprehensiveness, implementation and communication of its codes of ethics. We use a dataset on ethical policies of almost 2,700 firms in 24 countries. We find that there are significant differences among ethical policies of firms headquartered in different countries. When we associate these ethical policies with Hofstede’s cultural indicators, we find that individualism and uncertainty avoidance are positively associated with a firm’s ethical policies, whereas masculinity and power distance are negatively related to these policies.
KEYWORDS: business ethics, codes of ethics, cultural values JEL: G300, L210, M140
Introduction
Are there differences with respect to the ethical policies of firms that are headquartered in different countries? And are there differences among firms that belong to different industries? Chryssides and
Bert Scholtens received his Ph.D. at the Universtiy of
Amsterdam. Since 1999 he has been working at the
Department of Finance of the University of Groningen, the
Netherlands. His research particularly looks into the interaction between financial institutions and corporate social responsibility. He has published in, among others, Ecological Economics, Journal of Banking and Finance,
Finance Letters, Journal of Investing, Sustainable
Development, and Journal of Business Ethics.
Lammertjan Dam is a Ph.D. student at the Universtiy of
Groningen. He expects to defend his thesis about the integration of corporate social responsibility in economic
DOI 10.1007/s10551-006-9252-9
Ó Springer 2007
Cultural Values and International Differences Bert Scholtens
Lammertjan Dam in Business Ethics
ABSTRACT. We analyze ethical policies of firms in industrialized countries and try to find out whether culture is a factor that plays a significant role in explaining country differences. We look into the firm’s human rights policy, its governance of bribery and corruption, and the comprehensiveness, implementation and communication of its codes of ethics. We use a dataset on ethical policies of almost 2,700 firms in 24 countries. We find that there are significant differences among ethical policies of firms headquartered in different countries. When we associate these ethical policies with Hofstede’s cultural indicators, we find that individualism and uncertainty avoidance are positively associated with a firm’s ethical policies, whereas masculinity and power distance are negatively related to these policies.
KEYWORDS: business ethics, codes of ethics, cultural values JEL: G300, L210, M140
Introduction
Are there differences with respect to the ethical policies of firms that are headquartered in different countries? And are there differences among firms that belong to different industries? Chryssides and
Bert Scholtens received his Ph.D. at the Universtiy of
Amsterdam. Since 1999 he has been working at the
Department of Finance of the University of Groningen, the
Netherlands. His research particularly looks into the interaction between financial institutions and corporate social responsibility. He has published in, among others, Ecological Economics, Journal of Banking and Finance,
Finance Letters, Journal of Investing, Sustainable
Development, and Journal of Business Ethics.
Lammertjan Dam is a Ph.D. student at the Universtiy of
Groningen. He expects to defend his thesis about the integration of corporate social responsibility in economic