Ethical stances in Indian management culture

Abstract

Concerns the stances that Indian and UK managers take towards ethical issues at work. This topic is part of the broader cross‐cultural research agenda on managerial values. Makes a contribution to the subjects of business ethics and corporate citizenship. The responses of samples of Indian and UK managers to ethical issues were classified, using a research instrument called Redundancy, by eight ethical stances that are defined in a conceptual framework presented. The results are used to clarify issues that arise from the literature about Indian and UK managers’ values. The tentative findings are that Indian managers’ ethical stances were similar to those of Western managers but that, compared with the UK respondents, they were more likely to experience ethical tension between their personal, espoused, stances and those they took at work. The preference for a pragmatic, ethical puzzle, approach to issues, that was reported by both Indian and UK samples, is seen as a problem in developing good corporate citizenship. Presents an agenda for future research.