CEA Global Ethics & Cultural Considerations 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) rest on three pillars. Which option correctly identifies all three?
- Prevent, Protect, Remedy
- State duty to protect, Corporate responsibility to respect, Access to remedy (Correct answer)
- Disclose, Monitor, Enforce
- Legislate, Regulate, Adjudicate
Correct answer: State duty to protect, Corporate responsibility to respect, Access to remedy
The UNGPs' three pillars are the state's duty to protect human rights, businesses' responsibility to respect them, and access to remedy for victims.
Question 2: An ethics professional conducting due diligence for a new joint venture in Southeast Asia should FIRST:
- Assume local laws reflect adequate ethical standards and proceed
- Assess the partner's human rights record, anti-corruption practices, and alignment with company values (Correct answer)
- Negotiate contractual indemnification for any ethics violations by the partner
- Require the partner to adopt the home company's full ethics code before beginning talks
Correct answer: Assess the partner's human rights record, anti-corruption practices, and alignment with company values
Thorough pre-venture ethics due diligence identifies risks before commitments are made and informs risk mitigation strategies.
Question 3: The concept of 'moral free space' in integrated social contract theory refers to:
- Areas where no ethical rules apply and individuals may act freely
- The range of ethical choices available to communities beyond what hypernorms require or prohibit (Correct answer)
- Zones where multinational companies are exempt from local law
- The gap between a company's stated values and actual behavior
Correct answer: The range of ethical choices available to communities beyond what hypernorms require or prohibit
Moral free space is the domain within which authentic community norms can vary, provided they do not violate universal hypernorms.
Question 4: A corporation operating in a country with restricted freedom of speech should, at minimum:
- Publicly advocate for speech freedom through local media campaigns
- Avoid becoming complicit in suppressing employees' protected speech rights within the workplace (Correct answer)
- Align all internal communications with the host government's messaging
- Require employees to sign agreements not to discuss political topics at work
Correct answer: Avoid becoming complicit in suppressing employees' protected speech rights within the workplace
Companies have a baseline responsibility not to be complicit in human rights violations, including restrictions on legitimate speech, even where local law permits it.
Question 5: Cross-cultural ethical relativism, taken to its logical extreme, leads to the problematic conclusion that:
- Universal human rights norms must override all local customs
- No culture's practices can be criticized or judged by any external standard (Correct answer)
- Multinational companies must apply the strictest ethics standard globally
- Cultural differences are irrelevant to business ethics
Correct answer: No culture's practices can be criticized or judged by any external standard
Extreme relativism implies that practices like slavery or torture cannot be condemned across cultures, which undermines universal human rights.
Question 6: When localizing a global ethics hotline for a country with strong collectivist cultural norms, the most important adaptation is to:
- Eliminate the hotline since collectivist cultures don't use them
- Ensure anonymity protections are robust, as reporting may carry high social risk in group-oriented cultures (Correct answer)
- Require reports to be submitted by group consensus rather than individuals
- Make the hotline available only to senior managers
Correct answer: Ensure anonymity protections are robust, as reporting may carry high social risk in group-oriented cultures
In collectivist cultures, individuals face greater social pressure and risk when reporting concerns, making strong anonymity protections especially critical.
Question 7: Which of the following scenarios best illustrates 'race to the bottom' dynamics in global business ethics?
- Companies competing to exceed international labor standards to attract talent
- Companies relocating operations to jurisdictions with weaker regulations to lower compliance costs (Correct answer)
- Governments harmonizing ethics regulations upward through international treaties
- Multinationals lobbying for stronger anti-corruption enforcement globally
Correct answer: Companies relocating operations to jurisdictions with weaker regulations to lower compliance costs
A 'race to the bottom' occurs when competitive pressure drives companies to exploit lower regulatory standards in less-regulated jurisdictions.
CEA Global Ethics & Cultural Considerations 5
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) rest on three pillars.
Which option correctly identifies all three?