Intercultural discourse ethics: Testing Trompenaars' and Hampden-Turner's conclusions about Americans and the French

Are culture driven ethical conflicts apparent in the discourse of the prota gonists? A multi-year, multi-cultural study of managers by Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner resulted in two conclusions relevant to business ethics. The first is that intercultural business conflicts can often be traced to a fi nite set of cultural differences. The second is that enough similarities ex ist between cultures to provide the grounds for conflict resolution. The re search reported here gives credence to their study when applied to an ethic al conflict viewed from French and American perspectives.