The Impact of Culture on Ethical Business Decision-Making

Battels (1967) proposed that values and customs, religion, laws, patriotism, respect for individuality, and properly rights were factors influencing ethics decisions. Ferrell and Gresham (1985), in their contingency framework for understanding ethical decision- making, recognize that the social/cultural environment influences ethical behavior. Hunt and Vitell (1986, 1992) contend that the resolution of an ethical dilemma depends on the philosophical perspective the decision maker employs and postulate that the cultural environment (religion, legal system, and political system) is one of the important predictors of an individual’s ethical decision-making process. Unfortunately, these theoretical models of ethical decision-making do not tell us how culture influences ethical decision-making (Vitell, Nwachykwu, and Barnes 1993).