Philosophical Sediments

Abstract

Ethics rest on philosophical groundings. This holds implications for international business as the philosophers selected as the basis of ethics are informed by culture. Business publications provide a source for exploring this phenomenon. Articles from the CNKI database were downloaded and analyzed in KNIME. An author-created ontology was used to identify business ethics articles. Corpus linguistic techniques established philosophical sediments. From a Marxian perspective, Marx and Mao Zedong figured prominently, where Plato and Aristotle were frequent non-Marxian philosophers. A Mann-Whitney U test showed the median frequency of Marxian philosophers is significantly greater than non-Marxists. Dyadic analysis revealed more frequent reference to socialism over capitalism. These results suggest the philosophical sediments of these articles rest primarily on Marxian philosophers and collectivist constructs. As nations increasingly use artificial intelligence, they will use different philosophical lenses engendering distinctive results culminating in dissimilar system-level outcomes.