Abstract
How should highly-placed multinational managers, typically schooled in home country moral traditions, reconcile conflicts between those traditions and ones of the host country? When host country standards for pollution, discrimination, and salary schedules appear substandard from the perspective of the home country, should the manager take the high road and implement home country standards? Or does the high road imply a failure to respect cultural diversity and national integrity? In this paper, I construct and defend an ethical algorithm for multinational managers to use in reconciling such international normative conflicts.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Thomas Donaldson is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Graduate Program at the Loyola University of Chicago. Previously he was President of the Society for Business Ethics. His most important publications are Ethical Issues in Business (co-edited with Patricia Werhame), Prentice-Hall, 1979; Corporations and morality, Prentice-Hall, 1982; and Case Studies in Business Ethics, Prentice-Hall, 1984.
This is a revision of a paper entitled ‘International Whistleblowing’, to be published in Conflicting Loyalties in the Workplace, ed. by Frederick Elliston (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Donaldson, T. Multinational decision-making: Reconciling international norms. J Bus Ethics 4, 357–366 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00381779
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00381779