Globalization And Transnational Corporations' Communications On Ethics: An In-depth Study

In the context of globalization, chief areas of international relations are increasingly faced with the discrepancies and indeed conflicts between globalization and localization, which prevail in politics, economy and culture, as well as ethics. To probe into the ethical insights of International Political Economy (IPE) within the context of economic globalization constitutes a significant research-agenda in the studies of "Ethics and International Affairs". Being an emerging subject of international relations, Transnational Corporations (TNCs) serve not only as the driving force of globalization, but also the brunt of new conflicts and advancement in the era of globalization. More importantly, they have to confront the ethical discrepancies and conflicts caused by the interaction between globalization and localization. The existing international regulations and norms that are integrated from the exteriors and pre-designed cannot fully or effectively guide TNCs in reconciling or resolving specific conflicts that constantly emerge at the levels of operation and management.Stakeholder, a theory of economics, forms the general analytical framework of this dissertation. The ethical conflicts that TNCs are faced are not just internal-concerning employee relations, but involve external stakeholders. Taking the ethic problems that confront western multinationals in China as a case for analysis, this study focuses on the relationship between TNCs and their four important stakeholders (employees, partners/competitors, consumers and government). It aims to reveal the ethical conflicts, communications and integrations between the TNCs and their stakeholders. It is assumed that during their operations in China, western TNCs come across various ethical conflicts with different types of stakeholders, among which the most typical problems include labor standard gaps, ethical conflicts in administration, restrictive commercial behaviors such as monopoly, commodity credibility, differences of cultural sensitivity, differences of information transparency, taxation and transfer pricing, transfer of property right and technology, bribery.The theory of Constructivism theory assumes that ethics can be constructed. The less conflicts there is, the more integrated the enterprise will be, and the more favorable it will be for the management and operation of the TNCs. By the same token, TNCs must construct a multinational ethical system that bears both global and local characters so asto realize the integration of global and local ethical concepts. In the course of construction and integration, organizational communication plays the crucial role. For the TNCs, the communication is invariably strategic, international and intercultural, evolving as a long-term, painstaking process. An effective communication must be realized between the TNC and its stakeholders, which require the subdivided communicating object, flexible and diverse communicating approaches, and communicating content that meets the demand of different audiences.The communicating mechanism of TNCs can not only be used as important reference for western enterprises entering other emerging markets, but also has the enlightening effect on those growing Chinese TNCs.