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What Are The Differences Of Ethics In Chinese Business?

Decent Essays
General ethical guidelines are provided by different organizations such as the American Psychological Association (APA, 2017), the American Counseling Association (ACA, 2014), and may also be provided for specific industries or organizations. These codes of ethics can be used as a way to demonstrate differences in perception of ethics from one country to another, but are only guidelines rather than exhaustive rules or regulations. However, these are American institutions, which may be helpful for TMI in understanding differences between the US and China. For example, only 4 out of the 11 standards of assessments as put forth by the APA (2017) are consistent with the Chinese standards; including the use of assessments, interpreting…show more content…
Business leaders in the US may rely more on formal policies and processes, while Chinese business leaders may stress people orientated practices of loyalty and trustworthiness. These ethical concepts are not necessarily incompatible (many may actually overlap), but do highlight the importance of understanding perceptions from each culture.
Cultural Considerations Understanding the differences and similarities inherent in other cultures may provide opportunities when working with individuals (or groups) who may have different cultural values, beliefs, and/or norms. There are multiple ways to explore different cultures. One way is through Hofstede’s (2017) cultural dimension; which are currently made up of six broad categories, including high-low power distance, individualism-collectivism, masculinity-femininity, uncertainty avoidance, long-short term orientation, and indulgence-restraint. It is beyond the scope of this paper to explore all these cultural dimensions in great detail; however, it is important to understand some of the implications of these scores. The scores for both the US and China can be seen in Table 1, along with the differences between each score.
The largest difference between scores is for individualism, which can be interpreted as a continuum ranging from individualistic to collectivistic. Individualism would be the extent in which members of a culture emphasize personal goals, while collectivism would be the extent
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