The ethics agenda facing international business

Conflict of values and, of morality that plague the humanity today in the form of dilemmas of development represent the faultlines of social evolution. Such conflicts, which are conditioned by time and space, can only be resolved through a set of universal normative parameters cutting across the cultural barriers of human civilization. This is what was reflected in the series of global summits on environment human rights, population, social development, gender justice, and habitat, as ingredients of the Global Agenda-21. Emergence of the "democratic ethic" on a global scale provides an opportunity to correct the faultlines of social evolution. An ethical framework lends qualitative content to the process of globalization of democracy and of economics, and, thus, adds the qualitative character to the progress of humanity. Globalization impinges the role as well as the efficacy of nation-states. Nation-states and the institutions of global governance are yielding their place to international business as the prime-movers of Agenda-21. In the emerging scenario, multi-national corporations (MNCs) operating across boundaries of states and cultural zones have three distinctive options before themselves: (a) Take advantage to profitability in the short-term, get sucked away by the maelstrom of conflict of values and of interests in the process, and stand condemned; (b) Wait for the institutions of governance - global, national, and local - which are themselves caught in a maze of role-conflict to legislate a regulatory framework, or, (c) Formulate corporate normative guidelines that respond to the demands of multi-national operations and cross-cultural environment, pioneer a framework of Codes of Conduct in the form of an ethics agenda, and thus help the nations-states as well as the human society meet the challenges of Agenda-21. MNCs have to become Global Business Organizations (GBOs) and aid the progress of human society, while pursuing profits. They have a critical role in shaping and contributing to the Social Agenda of nation-states, and thus providing a turning point to the evolution of a global society.