Book Reviews
Abstract
BUSINESS & SOCIETY / June 2001BOOK REVIEWS BOOK REVIEWS T. Donaldson and T. W. Dunfee. 1999. Ties That Bind: A Social Contracts Approach to Business Ethics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press. 306 pp., $29.95. Do cultural differences necessarily require multinational managers to adopt a stance of ethical relativism? If managers insist on applying abso- lute standards of ethical behavior in different cultural contexts, they open themselves to charges of cultural imperialism. "Universal" ethical norms are all too easily conflated with ethnocentric home country assumptions about behaviors that are considered "normal" and hence, correct. Donaldson and Dunfee tell the story of a large U.S. computer products company whose managers insisted on using the same sexual harassment workshop exercises in Muslim countries that they had developed for Cali- fornia employees. Western trainers, unfamiliar with strict Muslim reli- gious guidelines about male/female social interactions, succeeded only in angering and confusing Muslim managers and muddying the message about appropriate behavior. After making their point about the need for greater managerial sensitivity in cross-cultural contexts, Donaldson and Dunfee offer a different story about the corporate search for a "cost- effective" way to remove asbestos from the aging luxury liner, the SS United