Cross Cultural Perspectives

Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Whenever large businesses expand globally they have to take other cultures ethics into consideration in order to not offend them by expanding into their countries without acknowledging their way of life. This includes doing business with wholesalers from other countries because what we deem as ethical in the U.S. may differ from country to country. For example, Walmart is the world’s largest retail organization and they buy wholesale goods from various countries. Although they stay in line with their own code of ethics while doing so, they have been challenged from time to time to adapt to other countries ethical perspectives. We will analyze one of the ethical challenges they faced while trying to buy low priced wholesale clothing from Bangladesh. What they saw as ethically right Walmart had problems seeing it their way and was challenged ethically.

Global Ethical Perspective

Like most organizations, Walmart goes “all out” to protect their name and reputation. Many people are familiar with the term “sweat shops” and retailers are frowned upon for buying wholesale goods from them. On the other hand, people in Bangladesh didn’t see a problem with operating from multi-level buildings with over 5,000 people. Not only were they crammed in there but the working conditions was unsafe. One of the garment manufacturing buildings made headlines when it collapsed and over 1,100 workers was killed and injured in April of 2013 due to the building not being built up to standard (Stewart 2014). Their ethical perspectives are different than ours here in the U.S. due to not having as many resources and the lack of financial backing. What we see as unethical in the U.S. they see as necessary and the only way they can survive in Bangladesh. They are deemed as one of the poorest nations in the world. That’s why they have a “by any means necessary” way of doing business.

Comparisons

Compared to how we do business here in the United States, Bangladesh is far, far behind. We pride ourselves in having safe and clean working conditions for the most part while in Bangladesh they are just trying to get by. Although our economy has been in a slump for years, we still feel the need to house employees safely while working in most organizations. As a whole we are more apt to taking much better care of our employees than Bangladesh. However, we have more resources and funding available in order to not compromise our ethics even though our economy has been in a slump. Most people have no idea how they would react if they were to be placed in a country unlike ours, which lack the necessities and not just the things that are wanted. Compared to Bangladesh, U.S. citizens have way more opportunities for education and advancement in the workplace than they do. This makes Bangladesh citizens more