Abstract
Central Asia presents a unique configuration of historical experience and societal responses that have been interacting and evolving for thousands of years. The current era of economic, political, and societal transformation in Central Asia began with the peaceful devolution of the Soviet Union and transition to the Commonwealth of Independent States in December 1991. Expectations about the natural social order based on western beliefs and experience may not apply in this part of the world, for—like all transitional and emerging market economies—Central Asia has inherited another social order that predates recent history. The field of Business Ethics provides an arena in which these issues can be explored. In this article, an overview of the current standing of Business Ethics as a field for teaching, training, and research in Central Asia is provided. Suggestions for further consideration and future research are presented in the concluding section.
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Notes
Archeological evidence places Paleolithic human settlements in the plains between the Caspian Sea and Lake Baikal some 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. From there, different groups migrated in all directions in pursuit of game—to the north, continuing on around the Arctic Circle; to the Northeast and then down into the Americas; East into Mongolia, Korea and Japan; and Southeast into China (The Genographic Project, https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/index.html).
Modern European languages developed from a proto-Indo-European language that is thought to have originated in the Central Asian Region before spinning off dialects that evolved into the modern languages of Afghanistan, India, Iran, Pakistan, and Europe. Similarly Korean, Japanese, Mongol, Turkish, and their variants have a common origin in the proto-Altaic language of the area around Lake Baikal in the northeastern part of the Central Asian Region and southern Siberia.
Archeological evidence confirms that the early Neolithic agricultural centers developed in the southwest Central Asian Region around the Caspian Sea, along the edge of soviet Central Asia (Harris 2010).
The broadest definition covers the vast region known during the soviet period as Inner Asia, including: the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Republic in western China, historically known as East Turkestan; all of the rest of China transected by the Old Silk Road west of its origin at Xian; (3) all of Mongolia, Russia, and Siberia; (4) parts of Afghanistan, India, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan, and Tibet; plus (5) the five core republics of soviet Central Asia named above.
Armenian, Russian, early Slavic, Tokharian.
The turkic languages that are spoken today in western China (Uygur), Uzbekistan (Uzbek), Azerbaijan (Azeri), and Turkey (Anatolian Turkish) are mutually intelligible variants of the old language of Turkestan. Likewise, Kazakh and Kyrgyz, the languages of modern Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, are mutually intelligible, as are the indo-iranian languages of Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
Alma Alpeissova, Dmitriy Anchevsky, Alima Dostiyarova, Mera Duisengaliyeva, Janet Humphrey, Aigul Kazhenova, Nurlan Orazalin, Liza Rybina, Jerry Wang.
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Erdener, C. Business Ethics as a Field of Teaching, Training, and Research in Central Asia. J Bus Ethics 104 (Suppl 1), 7–18 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-012-1258-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-012-1258-x