12.3 Cultural Relativism and Ethical Relativism

Have you ever traveled outside of where you live to visit a place with a different culture? You might have left the country to travel to some other nation, for example, or perhaps you’ve been to a region in your own country that’s very different from yours. And you don’t even have to go that far. Sometimes it’s enough to visit a different town, or to go from the city to the country or from a wealthier area to a poorer one, to encounter a different culture.

When we’re in one of these situations, one of the basic choices we have to make is how much we’ll change our behavior to match the customs of the culture we’re in—will we continue to do things in the way we have previously done them, or will we adopt the local way of doing them while we’re in that place? We might face this choice at restaurants, where different norms in different cultures determine what counts as appropriate behavior during a meal; we might also face this choice when doing even simpler tasks like asking for directions, crossing the street, or waiting in a line. Different cultures have different ways of handling these human interactions, and we can go along with what’s normal in the place we’re visiting, or we can just do whatever is done in the place we come from.

None of this seems much like an ethical issue so far, but ethics starts to come up when we consider whether one culture is superior to another. Many people feel that the way they do things is the “right” way to do them, and so they believe the norms governing how their culture works are better than the norms they find elsewhere.

But is this feeling justified? In most cases it probably isn’t. That is, in most cases, differences between cultures are not a matter of superiority or inferiority; there are just different problems to solve in human interactions, and different cultures make different choices about how they will solve those problems. We might feel that our culture is superior to another, but most of the time we feel that way simply because our cultural norms are the ones we’re comfortable with. In fact, most of the time it would be silly to judge another culture by the standards of our own culture, as someone from that culture we’re judging could turn around and do the same thing to our culture.

The idea that cultural norms ought to be evaluated by the standards of the culture they come from, and not by the standards of another culture, is called . The idea behind cultural relativism is that there is nothing inherently special about our own culture, other than the fact that it’s ours; and that fact does not mean our culture is superior to another. Cultural relativism suggests that we cannot use our culture to judge another culture.

In our example above of visiting a place outside of where we live, the cultural relativist approach would be to adapt your behavior to the local way of doing things. Insisting on doing things in the way your own culture does them, even when you’re in some other part of the world, seems to be an arrogance arising from the conviction that your own culture is superior to the one you’re visiting, and that you should therefore not have to change anything about your behavior. If the culture you’re visiting had the right norms, after all, you’d already be following them!

The realities of globalization in business urge us to take a generally cultural relativist approach to interacting with other cultures or other parts of the world. In other words, when we’re doing business with some other culture, it’s both respectful and wise to do things in the way that the other culture does them—again, choosing some other path is an implicit claim that our culture is in some way better than the one we’re currently participating in. This bias is called . Ethnocentrism is the fancy name for the belief that our own culture and cultural practices should be the benchmark by which we judge other cultures and practices.

So, cultural relativism is a valuable default stance. But there is an important ethical problem that emerges from these situations of globalization.

The problem occurs when the cultural norms of the place where we’re doing business seem not only different from our cultural norms, but blatantly wrong. One example would be if the culture we’re working in does not allow women or members of an ethnic minority to occupy leadership positions in a company. Such a view in their culture would not only be different from our view but would seem to be wrong entirely; it would seem to be an unacceptable ethical position to take, regardless of our stance on cultural relativism. So the problem here is what to do when other cultural norms appear not only different from our own, but ethically wrong. This same problem can manifest in other ways as well, such as when low- and middle-income countries regulate businesses with more relaxed safety standards.

From this reasoning we reach an important conclusion: cultural relativism does not automatically lead to ethical relativism. is the idea that each culture or community gets to determine its own ethical norms, and that we can evaluate those ethical norms only according to the rules of that culture or community. Ethical relativism is similar to the idea of cultural relativism, but is stronger in that we are talking not just about how things are done in a particular place, but what counts as right and wrong in that place.

Assuming a default position of cultural relativism does not mean that we also hold a similar view about ethical relativism. It is possible to be a cultural relativist about differences in cultures while maintaining that there are still more universal ethical standards that we can use to judge the ethical norms of different communities. In fact, we can even be ethical relativists about certain matters or certain ethical issues—we can let communities decide their ethical standards about certain issues—without being ethical relativists about everything. In the case of a community that does not allow members of a certain ethnic minority to hold leadership positions, for example, we would want to reject that ethical standard.

Rejecting the ethical standards of another culture and enforcing our own standards may be an example of cultural imperialism. is the enforcing, sometimes by actual force, of foreign cultural norms in a certain place or community. This kind of imposition is real; the western world’s treatment of native peoples offers too many examples to count. But not every imposition of alternative norms is a bad one. The difficulty, of course, lies in specifying which impositions are ethically justified, and why.

One of the major problems of globalization for business ethics is that of navigating the shifting terrain of cultural norms, ethical norms, and the possibility of cultural imperialism. When we work in other parts of the world or with other people from different cultures, we will confront norms very different from our own. How do we navigate these conflicts? How do we decide what to do when cultures clash and ethical standards come into conflict?

We can offer an answer to these questions by considering the reason why we would feel justified in rejecting the prejudiced ethical norms in the example above. In making that rejection, we are working from the assumption that ethical relativism might be true in limited circumstances, but can’t be true across the board—we are assuming that there are at least some ethical principles that we can use to judge the norms and practices of other cultures. These principles would be universal in the sense that they apply to all people in all cultures, regardless of local or community norms. They would be the basis on which we make ethical judgments across cultures, and so with them we’d be able to say that the prejudiced ethical norms in the example are wrong, even though they’re from a different culture.

The larger question, of course, is whether these universal ethical principles really do exist. There are two things to say about this question. The first is that it seems very likely that the principles exist. Some actions, such as racism, sexism, sexual assault, and other violent crimes seem to be wrong regardless of when and where they are committed; the culture of origin makes no difference to their wrongness. The principles that explain the cross-cultural wrongness of these actions may relate to the rights enjoyed by all human beings, regardless of culture.

The second thing to say about universal ethical principles is that, even if they do not exist, it may still be the case that we must assume they exist in order for businesses to operate successfully in a globalized market. We must assume, for example, that differential treatment on the basis of ethnicity is wrong, because if we don’t make this assumption, we may end up in a situation where our business contributes to wrongs done by harmful ethical norms. The ethical norms might not truly be universal, but we have to use them to guide our behavior in a globalized world where norms can be so different from each other.

Many of the ethical conflicts arising from globalization and business come down to differences in cultural norms, ethical norms, and ways of navigating them. Taking a strong stance here requires us to identify what we believe to be the correct universal ethical principles, and then to act on those principles. While we can be cultural relativists about many things, we don’t need to be ethical relativists about everything, and it is not cultural imperialism to insist on the fair, respectful, and safe treatment of everyone in a community.

Previous Next