An Assessment of Ethics in a Cross-Cultural Organizational Context: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Organizations face the complex challenge of establishing and upholding principles of ethics that transcend cultural boundaries in an increasingly interconnected global business landscape where ethnocentrism is no longer an option to navigate. This study tries to uncover the various research avenues that aid in understanding business ethics in a cross-cultural organizational context through outlining potential directions and providing insights for practitioners and scholars that can help in both navigating the complexities of business ethics in a multicultural setting and in assisting in expanding this field of research. The research involves a systematic review of the literature (SLR) of articles gathered from the Scopus database within management or business, economics, and social sciences categories, published between 2018 and 2023, using a specific composition of keywords. The framework was established based on the papers that were evaluated to describe how business ethics are articulated in a cross-cultural and international setting through five literature clusters, namely: business ethics & behavioral economics in a cross-cultural context, international business, business ethics and CSR across cultures, ethical leadership in a multicultural context and finally unethical behaviors and virtue. Hence, this study contributes to the systematic organization of the academic literature on this subject by offering preliminary grounds to assess the key concepts of the topic through the literature review and the results found and providing future implications that might help academics in investigating in-depth the perceived themes using different variables and/or methods.