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The author reflects on the absence of paternalistic leadership in cross-cultural leadership studies. Topics include the negative connotations of paternalism in the western countries, the representation of paternalism to the predominant leadership in the majority world, and the ethical issue of paternalism.

There is currently a lack of empirical work on cross-cultural differences in ethical attitudes towards day-to-day management decision-making in organizations. Work that currently exists in the area of management ethics also lacks cultural explanations of differences. The present study tries to overcome these deficiencies by providing a model of ethical decision-making that is based on cultural antecedents, which may explain differences in judgements of ethicality, and consequential ethical attitudes or professed behaviour. This article reports a 10-nation empirical study that focuses on ethical 'grey areas' that form part of the day-to-day decision-making in organizations across the globe. Countries were selected to represent variation along two cultural dimensions of 'collectivism-individualism', and 'uncertainty avoidance'. These dimensions were then used to explain national cultural differences in judgements of ethicality of decision items concerned with relations with external stakeholders, with the corporation and with the group. Results generally confirm that these dimensions, once elaborated to consider more recent detailed research, provide explanations for differences in ethical attitudes among national groups. This study points the way to further investigations based on cultural explanations of differences in managers' ethical attitudes and behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various topics within the issue on topics including Anglo-American management in businesses, social responsibility of business and moral aspects of businesses towards environment.