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Isolating Cultural and National Influence on Value and Ethics: A Test of Competing Hypotheses

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Abstract

We live in an increasingly globalizing world, in which countries are closely linked by international trade and investment ties. Cross-cultural comparative studies of national values and ethics have attracted growing research interest in recent years, because shared practices, values and ethical standards depend on shared beliefs. However, the findings of such studies have been unable to reach a consensus on the impact of culture on ethics-related attitudes and behavior. Empirically, many “cross-cultural” differences reported by previous studies might actually stem from cross-national differences. In order to partially fill this gap, this study advocates an analytical framework that isolates the role of cultural and national differences in order to test their relationship to individual level variables. Within this framework, we test␣competing hypotheses based on both cultural and national contexts by comparing groups of Chinese and American respondents together with a “bridging group” of Chinese Chinese-Americans. Theoretically, this contextual approach helps resolve the debate on the role of␣culture, by showing that culture plays a far more important role in shaping value orientations than the national background. Specifically, the two ethnic Chinese groups had many cultural values in common, and differed significantly from the Caucasian group. Implications are discussed.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous JBE reviewers for valuable comments and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Newmont Chair in Business Strategy, Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada, M3J 1P3

    Justin Tan

  2. The Fairbank Center for East Asian Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA

    Justin Tan

  3. Department of Management, Faculty of Business Administration, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong

    Irene Hau-Siu Chow

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  1. Justin Tan
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Correspondence to Justin Tan.

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Tan, J., Chow, I.HS. Isolating Cultural and National Influence on Value and Ethics: A Test of Competing Hypotheses. J Bus Ethics 88 (Suppl 1), 197–210 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-008-9822-0

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