Why and How to Use Case Studies in Teaching Business Ethics

There is a growing literature of case studies focused on the impact of cross-cultural challenges in international business ethics. Any multinational business, whether its home offices are in the USA or the EU, or in Tokyo, Manila or Shanghai, is likely to have struggled over questions of setting policy on many such issues, ranging from the employment of women and children, to appropriate occupational safety standards, to the regulation of gift-giving and receiving, to questionable payments and business entertainments, as well as to sexual discrimination and harassment. While such topics routinely appear in business ethics case studies, the problem in teaching them in Asian settings—college classrooms, university seminars, and in-house training programs—is that the cases tend to reflect the cultural values shared by their authors and the people in the situations they describe and analyze. Case studies imported from Western sources therefore not surprisingly also carry with them Western assumptions about common morality, standard business practices, legal institutions and their effectiveness, as well as the social and political environment in which businesses operate.