With the advent of the Internet, everything from personal relationships to business has gone ‘global’ for all intents and purposes. Today, you can talk to people all over the world just as easily as if you were talking to your next door neighbor. Businesses can exchange documents of all kinds at the push of a button, without having to wait days, and often weeks, for those documents to be delivered by hand. We are global and this has had a profound effect on the area of ​​business ethics.

What we must realize is that what may be considered ethical in our own country is not necessarily considered ethical in another country. This often makes it quite difficult to conduct global business. At one point, because we didn’t have the internet, it was more a matter of not accidentally disrespecting the customs and traditions of others. However, today there is much more at stake. Nor should you trample on the ethical code of other companies or countries, while remaining faithful to your own companies or to the ethical code of your country.

The first step is to understand the business traditions and customs of the country in which the company you are dealing with resides. Hopefully, they will do the same for you, striving to learn about their business traditions and customs. Next, you need a way to communicate clearly. In this area of ​​the global market, hiring the services of a talented translator is essential. You need to know clearly what they are saying and they also need to know what you are saying. Don’t rely on your high school foreign language semester to get you through this.
Global businesses also have a profound effect on your employees. For example, if you do business with a foreign country that only maintains regular business hours, in your time zone, one or more of your employees should be available for phone calls and so on, when it is convenient for the foreign company. Do you expect your employees to be in the office to take those calls or hold those teleconferences at midnight, and do you expect them to arrive early the next morning? That is not very ethical.

Another area that has become a growing concern when it comes to global business and ethics is reporting on income from foreign countries. If your business makes a sale to a business in Canada, for example, that sale will not be reported to the IRS in the United States by the business to which you made the sale or the government of Canada. By no one’s standards, it is unethical not to report that income to the IRS yourself.

In many countries, bribing officials is part of business activity. However, this does not constitute an ethical practice, and experts advise business owners to instruct all their employees that such practices will not be tolerated when conducting global business, or even when conducting business in their own country.

Global business is seemingly easy with the use of the internet, but in the grand scheme of things, when you start to see what is and what is not acceptable or expected in a foreign country, in terms of ethical business practices, one must use a lot precautionary.