A small cash gift at a client’s wedding is expected in some markets but would look suspiciously like bribery in others, while things like fraud are barred everywhere. A reader in compliance, watching global consensus fray, asks how far standards should bend to local custom. Ask an Ethicist columnist Vera Cherepanova answers by way of idealism, relativism and the pluralist ground between.
“I work in compliance for a global company headquartered in Western Europe. Lately, employees across the organization have been asking me why we should follow the same ethical standards everywhere when countries, cultures and expectations are pulling further apart. I guess they just see what we all see — that global consensus is vanishing. Our global policies haven’t always matched local norms in some of the markets where we operate. Gifts and favoritism are the first examples that come to mind. My question is: How far should compliance bend to local expectations now, if at all?”— Name withheld
What a great, perennial question — and one of the oldest in philosophy, by the way. Let me tackle it with a mix of theory, history and practice.
At an individual level, moral judgments are broadly guided by either an idealistic or relativistic orientation, or some combination of the two. Idealistic and relativistic orientations then further guide the specific ethical reasoning approaches that people apply in their ethical-decision-making processes.
Idealism, or monism in its stronger form, is the moral belief that ethics are universally applicable regardless of culture or conditions. In other words, idealists believe that certain conduct is always unethical or immoral regardless of where, when and why it occurs.
Idealism is an attractive philosophy because of its simple application. For the idealist, a particular behavior is either morally or ethically permissible, or it is not. Certain restrictions on women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, for example, are immoral and unethical for the idealist who believes that discrimination based on gender is never permissible.
For many, idealism is unattractive because of its rigidity. It may be, for example, that a significant part of Saudi Arabia’s population supports certain restrictions on women’s rights in order to preserve the country’s ancient religious traditions.
Cultural imperialism is one variant of idealism. It implies that one’s national and cultural code of conduct and moral principles are superior to all others. Nations throughout history — including the ancient Roman Empire and the British Empire — have practiced cultural imperialism. There are more recent examples, too. But, in fact, one culture’s highest ethical principle may mean nothing to another culture, as the example of women in Saudi society shows. What is sometimes justified by benevolent-seeming ideas of education, civilization and modernization may be just one group trying to impose the vision of what is right and good on the other.
That brings us to another important dimension — time. When European explorers went out into the world in the 16th and 17th centuries, they found that, wherever they went, people danced around campfires, had rituals that bonded groups together and played beat-heavy music. Perhaps these practices are simply human nature, but feudal systems were also pretty common at the time.
Clearly, human societies vary and have evolved following different paths.
Unlike idealists, relativists do not believe that morals and ethics are universally applicable. Instead, they believe morals and ethics vary between cultures. The relativistic point of view says there is no absolute right or wrong. Ethical principles are therefore relative to cultural and social realities people live in.
Relativists may argue that free-market economies should refrain from imposing their model on communist countries, if this is what citizens want. Idealists, on the other hand, may argue that free-market economies are the most productive and should be imposed on all countries regardless.
There is some appeal in relativism: It teaches us to approach other cultures with some humility before assuming that the way we do things is obviously the right one. I see plenty of people attracted to this “progressive” idea, partly because there is so much intolerance masquerading as tolerance or moral clarity these days.
But taken to its logical extreme, relativism becomes untenable as well. If everything can be justified because “that is their culture” or “those were different times,” then eventually anything goes.
There is, of course, a much-needed middle ground between idealism and relativism.
Pluralism posits there may be multiple legitimate moral values and moral orders, emerging both from human nature and from the societies we build. There may therefore be more than one ethical way to approach the same problem. That flexibility seems particularly apt for multinational businesses.
For example, companies generally have global zero-tolerance policies toward fraud or sexual harassment. Such a prohibition is derived from idealism since the ban on these two types of conduct is universal throughout the company.
On the other hand, the policy toward salespeople offering gifts to clients may vary based on geography. For instance, salespeople based in the US may be prohibited from offering cash gifts to potential clients, since this could be construed as bribery. Meanwhile, the same company’s sales team in parts of Asia may be permitted, based on appropriate guidelines and policies, to give small cash gifts when attending the weddings of customers or clients, because such cash gifts are an integral aspect of many Asian cultures. This variation in gift-giving policy is derived from relativism, since the policy is based on the ethical and moral principles of different cultures.
Seng-ts’an, a Chinese Buddhist philosopher, wrote that “the struggle between ‘for’ and ‘against’ is the mind’s worst disease.” Put another way, in my loose interpretation, failure to see nuance is often not a sign of moral clarity but evidence of oversimplification and a lack of thought.
What makes your question particularly worthwhile to ponder is that the old philosophical problem is suddenly of interest outside the E&C geeks’ bubble. Now we want machines to align with human values, although, as we’ve just seen, we have never agreed on what those universal values are, and for good reason.
But we are somehow expected to take thousands of years of disagreement over idealism, relativism, competing moral goods and cultural differences and turn them into something sufficiently precise that a machine can use it as a reference point.
“We need wisdom to figure out how to even think about alignment that, in my view, Silicon Valley does not have,” David Robinson, who recently resigned from OpenAI after working on its safety efforts, said on a recent podcast.
I am not sure if people in Silicon Valley are reading this column, but if they are, here’s what I’d suggest they meditate on: The perennial global vs. local question has no clear-cut answer, but as some countries are racing ahead in AI efforts and others are lagging behind, the risk of yet another wave of cultural imperialism is accelerating. “Global” shouldn’t mean exporting every preference of headquarters — or a frontier lab — and calling it an ethical standard. And “local” can’t mean treating every practice as acceptable only because it is accepted locally.
Someone at some point will ultimately have to do the job of deciding what belongs in the non-negotiables and what can legitimately vary. In the world of potent machines and vanishing global consensus, as you rightly said, knowing what not to relativize and what not to universalize might be the most required ethical skill.
Business Ethics Is a Discipline, Not a Disposition
What does a board director need beyond a moral character? Plenty, writes Ask an Ethicist columnist Vera Cherepanova, who says we should start with understanding the roles business leaders play in society.
Read moreDetailsReaders respond
The previous question came from a board director wondering what can be required of a board when it comes to business ethics, on top of personal integrity and good character. The dilemma revolved around the fact that ethical performance of a leader — a board director or a CEO — cannot be a function of whether they are kind, nice or morally sincere. With vast amounts of influence and decisions affecting others in disproportionate ways, understanding the ethical obligations created by the power and discretion their roles give them is a must.
In my response, I noted: “Personal integrity is certainly a baseline for directors, as it is for all good human beings, but something tells me it is not sufficient for the governance process. Why?
“Apart from being squarely naïve, the idea that if we get business leaders to be better people or to more sincerely commit to moral values underplays the social, economic, and political influence that businesses have in society and the problems that come from either a cynical or benevolent use of that influence.
“A ‘good person’ CEO can still preside over a harmful business model. A well-intentioned board can still make poor decisions if it lacks the right processes, information, challenge and understanding of its role.” Read the full column here.
“All board members of public companies have a fiduciary duty to the shareholders, the employees, the vendors, and the customers. They have a duty of care. All directors of public companies must pass an FBI background check for any criminal activity. It’s a “given.’ You cannot serve if you are unethical.” — KC
Vera Cherepanova
