Importance of Cultural and Ethical Variations for Transnational Companies

Seminar paper from the year 2000 in the subject Business economics - Business Ethics, Corporate Ethics, grade: 1,3 (A), University of Kassel (Economics), language: English, abstract: For a long time the role of culture and ethics was ignored in business. As globalisation and regionalisation have progressed people were confronted very often with cultural differences. To be aware and to understand different cultures has nowadays become inevitable, if transnationals want to be successful in a long term.The following text deals with the importance of cultural and ethical differences for the management of transnational companies. The text is divided into four different parts. In the first we define culture and ethics. The main subject of the second part is the international marketing environment. Political and economic conditions and their cultural and ethical context are pointed out. The third part shows how the internal environment (Corporate Culture) is influenced by culture and ethics and therefore affects marketing decisions of each country market in different ways. In the last part we give an example of one transnational company called Bear Systems1 in order to underpin with practical experiences the cultural and ethical aspects shown above.[...]