Review and critique of academic literature

Ethics vary within different nations.

Korean business defines ethics within a very loose individualized context; yet show unfavorable opinions regarding the ethics of foreign business and their marketing practices.

In order to improve the ethical reputation of foreign marketing campaign practices within Korea, more understanding of how Korean business professionals define proper business ethics.

Description of Recent Procedure

452 Korean managers were asked to evaluate the ethical practices of businesses within a marketing setting.

Flaws in Procedural Design

Only managerial staff was included within the context of the study. This leaves out the opinion of other classes of workers.

Analysis of Data

ANOVA was used to provide measurable elements that helped define the way Koreans saw as ethical practices.

Conclusion

Results showed that Korean managers had fluid understanding of business ethics with allowance for individual interpretations; however foreign companies were held to higher ethical standards based on what would could be as cultural differences.

The nature of business ethics can change dramatically depending one what country one is doing business in. For example, foreign companies doing business in Korea have found it hard to keep up an ethically clean image based on the strict codes of ethics. However, research conducted by Kim & Chun (2003) hypothesized that despite claims of intense ethical standards, the nature of Korean business ethics actually depends on the individual context in which decisions are taking place, and not on an underlying code of ethics which rules over a much broader set of decisions.

Statement of the Research Problem

As more and more foreign companies open up shop overseas in Korea, much of the professional world within the nation has criticized their practices as being unethical. For many American companies working within Korea, natives have states that "gifts, entertainment, and special treatment are mostly not allowed in doing business in Korea," (Kim & Chun 2003: 377). Yet, there seems to be no concrete evidence for a single set of ethical business practices within the country itself. This then makes doing business under and ethical standard hard based on the lack of a strong and concrete model for ethical practice.

Description of Research Procedure

The study reviewed here was conducted in order to test whether the ethical standards were much more loosely based on individual decision practices rather than a larger universal underlying theme. Researchers used the Vignette method which is "a scenario-based approach that is about how managers (participants in this study) respond to certain ethical dilemma situations," (Kim & Chun 2003: 378). Thus, various situations within the context of marketing were given to the sample population of Korean managers as to find correlations and similarities within how Korean business is supposed to act when acting within the limitations of ethical practices. 473 original participants were given questionnaires, with 452 totaling the final number of answered questionnaires for analysis.

Flaws in Procedural Design

Yet, within the context of this study, only managers were included. There were no participants on the two extreme sides of the spectrum. No one form either an executive or regular employee status was included within the review. Thus, the study represents the feelings of ethical practice only from a limited sample of the Korean business population currently practicing within the nation.

Analysis of Data

The questionnaires presented a numeric scale in which each participant was to judge the ethical nature of the decision made in the scenario. 452 of the final results were then used within an ANOVA analysis to provide information on significant differences and similarities.