Dushkina Yuliya
AMM 260.5096
Homework #5.
1. Ethics are an individual’s personal beliefs about whether a decision,
behavior, or action is right or wrong.
2. The concept of ethical behavior usually refers to behavior that conforms
to generally accepted social norms; unethical behavior, then, is behavior
that does not conform to generally accepted social norms.
3. Culture plays a prominent role in the formation of ethics. It defines a
border between ethical and unethical behavior: what is acceptable in one
country may be not acceptable in another one.
4. Organizations attempt to manage ethical behavior across borders by using
guidelines and Codes of Ethics, ethical training, organizational
practices and developing of a corporate culture.
5. Social responsibility is the set of obligations an organization undertakes
to protect and enhance the society in which it functions.
6. There is a difference between ethics and social responsibility. Ethics in
business relate to individual managers and other employees and their
decisions and behaviors. Organizations themselves do not have ethics, but
do relate to their environment in ways that often involve ethical dilemmas
and decisions by individuals within the oganization. These situations are
generally referred to within the context of social responsibility.
7. The major areas of social responsibility for international business are
social responsibility toward stakeholders, toward the natural environment,
and toward general social welfare.
8. There are the four general approaches that a firm can take with regard to
social responsibility: obstructionist stance, defensive stance, accomoditive
stance and proactive stance.
9. Whistle-blowing is the disclosure by an employee of illegal or unethical
conduct on the part of others within the organization.
10. Representative laws and regulations that attempt to address international
ethics and social responsibility:
 The Foreign Corrupt Practicies Act (FCPA) – was passed by the
United States Congress in 1977. The FCPA prohibits U.S. firms,
their employees, and agents acting on their behalf from paying or
offering to pay bribes to any foreign government official in order to
influence the official actions or policies of that official to gain or
retain business. This prohibition applies even if the transaction
occures entirely outside U.S. borders.
 The Alien Tort Claims Act was passed in the United States in 1789
but has recently emerged as a potentially significant law affecting
U.S. multinational corporations. Under some recent interpretations of
this law, U.S. multinationals may conceivably be responsible for
human-rights abuses by foreign governments if the copanies
benefited from those abuses.
 The Anti-Bribery Convention of the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development was developed in and first ratified
by Canada in 2000; it has since been ratified by 33 other countries.
The Convention is an attempt to eliminate bribery in international
business transactions. Its centerpiece mandates jail time for those
convicted of paying bribes.
 The International Labor Organization (ILO) has become a major
watchdog for monitoring working conditions in factories in
developing countries.