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Perceptions of risk associated with an international investment decision are affected by the decision maker's understanding of ethical issues within a country. This study provides insights into the foundation for ethical judgments by investigating whether and how Japanese and Taiwanese graduate business students differ in assessing the ethical content of business scenarios. Considering cultural characteristics of the two countries, differences in ethical judgments were expected. The results show that when basing ethical judgments on relativistic and utilitarian criteria, the Japanese tend to judge the scenarios as significantly more unethical than the Taiwanese. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses perceived ethical perceptions in business practices between men and women. The reasons for the existence of such a difference have only been tentatively explored. Researching of a sample of German business students, the authors found that gender is significantly related to the respondents' intention to behave in the same (unethical) manner as described in the scenarios. The study focused specifically on the justice and relativism perspectives since they capture the posited differing approaches of men and women to moral dilemmas. A significant gender effect was found when relativist criteria were employed in ethical judgment.

In this comparative survey of seventy-three Russians and ninety-two US managers, we explore differences and similarities in ethical decision-making among respondents from these two countries within a business context. Using Reidenbach and Robin's (1988) multi-criteria ethics instrument, we examined whether business people in Russia and the US differed in their judgement of the ethical content of business decisions. Russia and the US provide an interesting comparison because of the extreme differences in their cultural characteristics as well as in their economies and related business development. Our results indicate that, while Americans, in general, tended to assess certain actions as less ethical when applying utilitarian or justice criteria, the ethical judgements of the two groups differed by situation and by criteria employed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]