Understanding of Business Ethics in Nations Through a Comparison of American and Turkish Business Ethics Literature

Abstract

This study aims to contribute to field studies by discussing how the sources of hypernorms in different countries with different cultural contexts affect different understanding of business ethics based on a content anal- ysis of articles published in Turkey and the United States of America retrieved from academic databases querying ‘business ethics’ in their titles. Results for Turkey show that the historically- and culturally-rooted understanding of sovereign state manifests itself both in its national business system, paternalistic features and a high-power-dis- tance society. As a result of the sovereign state ideology, the dominant local economic community in Turkey is the state which can lay down ethical norms for its members through micro-social contracts. This ultimately lays the groundwork for the emergence of a context-specific business ethics approach. By contrast, the dominant local economic community seems to be the corporations in the USA where the micro-social contract may include that establishing strong ethical principles is the responsibility of corporations as the state does not fully regulate the relationship between individuals and businesses.