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ABSTRACT. Are culture driven ethical conflicts apparent in the discourse of the protagonists? A multiyear, 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 finite set of cultural differences. The second is that enough similarities exist between cultures to provide the grounds for conflict resolution. The research reported here gives credence to their study when applied to an ethical conflict viewed from French and American perspectives.
KEY WORDS: American culture, communitarianism, conflict resolution, discourse ethics, French culture, guided discourse, individualism, particularism, Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, universalism
The solutions to three universal problems that mankind faces distinguish one culture from another. The problems - people's relationship to time, nature and other human beings - are shared by mankind; their solutions are not. The latter depend on the cultural background of the group concerned.
Two countries which Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1998, p. 25) highlight with respect to their preceding quote about cultural contrasts are France and U.S.A. Their model, based on cultural dimensions, identifies the causal elements which differentiate how a country's managers approach business dilemmas. On their first two dimensions (universalism-particularism and individualism - communitarianism) there are marked differences between France and the U.S.A. If these differences do, indeed, exist is it possible to reconcile ethical conflicts between citizens of those countries with respect to business situations that embody those two dimensions?
Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner list the stereotypes which the French and Americans have of each other. The French see Americans as naive and unprincipled. Americans, in turn, view the French as emotional with a strong sense of hierarchical solutions. Yet, even with these cultural variations, Trompenaars and HampdenTurner (1998, p. 28) identify a series of similarities between the two countries regarding norms and values. It is on these similarities, they claim, that conflict resolutions might be grounded. What they propose in a very general sense is a balancing of shared norms and values so that the cultural dimensions can be reconciled.
This paper reports the results of a two-phase study which investigated: 1) the extent to which the hypothesized French-American cultural variations displayed themselves, and 2) whether those different values could be balanced through...