Abstract
The dramatic advances in technology, decreased restrictions on transportation and financial flows has facilitated the rapid growth of international business in the last decade. While global marketing poses several challenges in designing and developing marketing strategies, it has also created new challenges in dealing with ethical/unethical issues. Several studies examined the pervasiveness of unethical marketing practices in different cultures (Armstrong 1992; Dubinsky et al. 1991) and concluded that the pervasiveness of unethical behavior in international marketing arena creates an urgent need for a common global code of conduct. The ethical/unethical issues have brought the role of multinational corporations to the forefront. Multinational corporations are faced with a choice between designing a code of conduct uniform across all the subsidiaries in different nations or develop individual code suited for each country. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the two choices - global code of ethics and individualized code of ethics. We will examine the pertinent literature in discussing the challenges in developing code of ethics in an international marketing arena.
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Keywords
- International Business
- Ethical Dilemma
- Multinational Corporation
- Cultural Relativism
- International Business Study
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References
Armstrong, Robert W. 1992. “An Empirical Investigation of International Marketing Ethics: Problems Encountered by Australian Firms.” Journal of Business Ethics 11 (March): 161–171.
Donaldson, Thomas. 1992. “Can Multinationals Stage a Universal Morality Play.” Business and Society Review 81 (Spring): 51–55.
Dubinsky, Alan J., Marvin A. Jolson, Masaaki Kotabe and Chae Un Lim. 1991. “A Cross-National Investigation of Industrial Salespeople’s Ethical Perceptions.” Journal of International Business Studies 22 (Winter): 651–670.
Frederick, William C. 1991. “The Moral Authority of Transactional Corporate Codes.” Journal of Business Ethics 10 (March): 165–177.
Laczniak, Gene R. and Patrick E. Murphy. 1991. “International Marketing Ethics.” Bridges 2(3/4): 155–177.
Levitt, T. 1983. “The Globalization of Markets.” Harvard Business Review (May/June).
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© 2015 Academy of Marketing Science
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Rallapalli, K.C., Nwachuku, S., Valle, M. (2015). International Marketing Ethics: Challenges in Developing Global Code of Ethics. In: Choudhury, P. (eds) Proceedings of the 1996 Multicultural Marketing Conference. Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17395-5_30
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17395-5_30
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-17394-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-17395-5
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