Minimal influence of national culture to corruption, pollution, and harmful working conditions: An empirical contribution to business ethics

This study is an empirical contribution to business ethics: It demonstrates on an ecological level that national culture (according to Hofstede) plays a minor role in determining the levels of the unethical business practices corruption, pollution, and harmful working conditions of countries. For that hypothesis were statistically tested. Together with strong explanatory macroeconomic indicators (gross national income per capita, economic freedom, democracy index, human development index, gini index, and employment in agriculture) all main components of Hofstede's model were found to have no significant influence or very little explanatory power on the investigated unethical business practices. National Culture cannot explain the levels of unethical business practices in countries. More than 80 percent of the levels of corruption, pollution, and harmful working conditions in countries are explained by the macroeconomic indicators of this study. In international business especially in developing and threshold countries (besides in industrialized countries) it is still practice to accept the three unethical business practices in the supply chain by excusing it with culture. This study demonstrates that this argumentation is not scientifically tenable.