Multinational enterprise decision principles for dealing with cross cultural ethical conflicts

Cross cultural ethical conflicts are a major challenge for managers of mult inational corporations (MNEs) when an MNE's business practices and a host c ountry's practices differ. We develop a set of decision principles to help MNE managers deal with these conflicts and illustrate with examples of ethi cal conflicts faced by MNEs doing business in contemporary Russia (DeGeorge , 1994). We discuss the generalizability of the principles by comparing the m to the Donaldson (1989) and Buller and Kohls (1997) decision models. Fina lly we discuss changes in the cross cultural ethical problems facing MNE ma nagers and offer suggestions for future corporate and academic work on thes e problems.