Global Industry Networking and the Issue of Ethics

Increasingly, enterprises world-wide are being drawn into co-operation across national and cultural borders.. It includes specifically production enterprises which are increasingly interdependent in both their production processes and their business management. Such co-operation, however, and its accompanying communications are continuously challenged by the differences of values underlying all communication. Behind this challenge looms up the fundamental question of ethics which no longer has any claim to universal validity. This fundamental question is discussed in the paper based on the concept of Discourse Ethics. This concept is applied to enterprise networks illustrated by a case study in Germany. Copyright © 2002 IFAC