The Ethics of International Business (The ^ARuffin Series in Business Ethics)

When standards for pollution, discrimination, and salary schedules are lower in an offshore host country than they are in the home country, should multinational corporations insist on home country standards? Or does using home standards imply a failure to respect cultural diversity and national integrity? What obligations, if any, do multinationals have to the people they affect indirectly? In this study, business ethicist Thomas Donaldson offers three concepts for interpreting international business ethics: a social contract between productive organizations and society, the notion of a fundamental international right, promulgated by ten specific international rights, and a moral "algorithm" to help multinational managers make tradeoffs between conflicting norms in home and host countries. He then employs these concepts in the analysis of specific problems such as the distribution of hazardous technology and South African divestment.