Aidan Thain, Stephanie Dinca, Nathan Doering, Aitana Bonneau, Selena Tapia

Navigating multiple cultures while still maintaining respect, begs the question: how do managers eliminate ethnocentrism when interacting with employees internally and abroad? We hope to shed light on the common problems that often occur in the work environment within a global company, and to also provide solutions to the ignorance managers could overlook when integrating international employees and clients.

Demuijnck, G. (2015). Universal Values and Virtues in Management Versus Cross-Cultural

Moral Relativism: An Educational Strategy to Clear the Ground for Business Ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 128(4), 817–835.

Geert Demuijnck explains the different areas of relativism and universalism, and the extent to which they play into people’s mindsets, even those such as within a business manager’s. Demuijnck brings into discussion many different real world examples of how to understand and avoid ethnocentrism. Though many of the examples depicted were outside a work environment, he discusses points regarding a fine line that cultural respect should be talked about, and how many cases don’t have a distinct right or wrong answer. The question of ethics in any situation must be carefully analyzed and thought of from many different angles. Demuijnk refers to Geert Hofstede’s research on different cultural dimensions, but never delves into the different dimensions, leaving this article with missing information that we could fully utilize. In regards to our own research of avoiding ethnocentrism in the work environment, this article does provide good insight on how to understand and break down moral universalism within a world of ethical business environments.

Isotalus, E. & Kakkuri-Knuuttila, M. (2018). Ethics and Intercultural Communication in Diversity Management

Emerald Insight: Equality Diversity and Inclusion.ISSN: 2040-7149

The authors of the article focus on the importance of having empathy when it comes to communication in diversity management. They explore the different ways of achieving ethical intercultural communication, mutual understanding, and shared meanings in the workplace and introduce the idea/solution of “negotiating reality dialogue”, which was originally developed for international business by Victor J. Friedman as a tool for diversity management. They also touch on the consequences that can come from when a multicultural organization does not have open communication with it’s employees. The main challenge to diversity management that the authors mention is to deconstruct value hierarchies which are detrimental to organizations from both ethical and economic perspectives. This article fits in with our topic perfectly because it is addressing the problems as well as suggested solutions on how to improve diversity management and also avoid conflicts that can come when it is done incorrectly. It also not only touches on multicultural management but also emphasizes the importance of ethics in order to achieve a good strategy to multicultural management.

Moon, C. (2000). Managing Cross Cultural Business Ethics. United Kingdom;Anglia Business 

School, Anglia Polytechnic University.

Chris Moon talks about dilemmas and individual behavior in a cross-cultural business. He also talks about how these two things relate to ethnocentrism and how to avoid it. This relates to our topic because it helps us understand trends of individuals in a workplace and indications of people who may have preconceptions about others in the workplace and how they handle them so that ethnocentrism can be eliminated.

Snaiderbaur, S. (2012). Symphonic Leadership: A Model for the Global Business Environment.

ISM Journal of International Business, 1-17.

In the article, Snaiderbaur discusses new approaches that are meant to control ethnocentrism and help managers work with people from all different cultures. Snaiderbaur talks about how managers need to support and encourage cultural differences. This is relevant to our topic as it discusses the possible mindsets that overcome ethnocentrism and allow managers and employees to flourish. The article specifically talks about the importance of the individual and how managers need to be culturally aware. This allows us to gain a better understanding of what managers need to do to become successful in an international organization

Yoonhyeung Choi, & Cameron, G. T. (2005). Overcoming Ethnocentrism: The Role of Identity in Contingent Practice of International Public Relations.

Journal of Public Relations Research, 17(2), 171–189.

Yoonhyeung Choi and Glen T Cameron performed a research in Korea to investigate how multinational companies interact with the Korean public in respect to their cultural differences. In their study they attempt to prove whether a contingency theory or a psychocultural conflict theory is more accurate to explain why multinational companies experience issues with connecting with the locals. They did this by interviewing CEOs and high-level managers of companies that they had existing professional relationships with and branching out to their peers/acquaintances to collect a snowball sample to analyze. In this study, one of their findings turned out to be that a portion of the conflicts are believed to have started from simple misunderstandings.