Cross Cultural Perspectives
Brian K
ETH/316
December 21, 2012

Cross Cultural Perspectives

Ethics are the product of a society’s culture so it is natural there will be different responses to similar ethical scenarios. Beekum, Stedam, and Yamamura (2003) suggest these differing conclusions will lead to conflict where one side perceives the outcome is ethical whereas the other does not. Another possible outcome is that one side may not even see a decision even being morally significant. Global organizations have the additional challenge when operating within a multi-national environment of recognizing cultural differences while maintaining a core moral and ethical foundation. Cisco Systems is a global technology company
One notable and innovative solution that came from the initial phase of Cisco’s corporate ethics initiative was the creation of “Ethics Idol.” Similar to the popular television show, “Ethics Idol” ran on the company’s intranet web page and presented employees with animated ethical scenarios that are evaluated by judges (Singer, 2008). These scenarios include common business topics such as sales practices and procuring raw materials. Employees are encouraged to vote online which eventually turns into a contest among the 465 world wide offices. In an interactive, fun way, the initiative helped to raise corporate awareness that ethical situations are not always cut and dry. Cisco, being the leading innovator of network infrastructure in a global market, faces externally ethical dilemmas from a multi-national perspective. China and countries in the Middle East have been known for using technology to suppress political dissent and control the flow of information. In 2011, the government of China came to Cisco to help with an ambitious surveillance project with as many as 500,000 cameras to prevent crime in one of its largest cities (Chao, 2011). Cities all over the world leverage video surveillance as a method for crime prevention and detection but, in comparison, New York and Chicago use an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 video cameras to police the cities