Trans-ideological business values in international codes of conduct

Traditionally, scholars of international business have been unconcerned with ethics and values, in part due to the widely-held belief that standards vary across cultures and ideologies. Recently, however, business ethicists have considered whether there are some business-related values that are shared across cultures. Through an analysis of the codes of conduct for multinational enterprises of four international organizations, five trans-ideological business values are discovered. They are national sovereignty, social equity, human rights, market integrity and organizational autonomy. The consensus in values is critically important for both scholarship and management.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Second Annual Meeting of the International Association of Business and Society (March 1991). The author would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.