4. Recontextualizing the Management Idea of ‘Business Ethics’
4.7. Recontextualizing the ethics program
4.7.2. Recontextualizations in a Chinese subsidiary
131 happens is a local rejection of the code of ethics and the invention of a new approach deemed more suitable.
Due to the highly international nature of the headquarters and the many nationalities represented here, it would be incorrect to ascribe the criticism raised here to any particular national cultural belonging. Managers and staff in Switzerland belong to what Moore (2005) has termed the Transnational Capitalist Society, which a ‘globe-spanning, transnational but locally-engaged, social formation which does not comprise a single, solidary group, but a variety of different groups with complex and social connections between them’ (Moore 2005:164). Drawing on this concept, Moore emphasizes the multiple belonging and flexible ascription to various cultural communities among business people in multinational corporations. Similarly, within the global headquarters in Ferring, the staff come from various national backgrounds, and many have lived and worked in several countries throughout their careers. Despite this national cultural diversity, the criticism of the ethics program for its lack of operationalizibility was prevalent among the global human resources officers at
headquarters, regardless of nationality.
In the following, I will move to a different context and discuss how the Ferring Philosophy and the efforts of the Global Ethics Office that articulate it are interpreted – and perhaps recontextualized - within a subsidiary in China.
132 emphasizing independent thinking. Many of the local ethics counterparts in Asian
subsidiaries, I am told, have asked for a list of solutions for these dilemma cases, which – of course – has not been supplied. When inquiring why solutions have of course not been given, different Ethics Officers explain that if you provide the solutions, then people may think that there is some set of right answers, as if ethics were a kind of test. But if the circumstances change, they explain, then another answer might be the right one. The ethics officers fear that providing answers or check-lists for the dilemma cases might instil what they term a ‘compliance approach’ into the dilemmas, referring to the distinction between ethics and compliance described earlier. Their goal is to ‘educate’
people to reflect on the ways in which dilemmas change, hereby also changing the right way to handle them.
Later, during my first field trip to China, an ethics officer from Denmark is conducting a
‘train the trainer’ workshop with local ethics counterparts on how to facilitate the Ferring Philosophy Workshop in the Chinese subsidiary. Jane, the Ethics Officer who is
‘facilitating’ the workshop, has thoroughly prepared a guidebook for how to facilitate and takes us through ‘facilitation skills’ as well as the content of the workshop. As the dilemma cases are an important part of the workshop concept, Jane also spends time explaining how to present these and facilitate discussion among the participants. During this training, we are reminded that the dilemma case discussion itself is valuable, and that we must never tell a participant that their assessments are wrong. Instead, we should challenge them with counter-arguments or try to make them see things from a different angle. Within the guidebook for facilitators that accompanies the training, it is likewise emphasized that we must challenge the participants and ask them to challenge each other’s beliefs when discussing the dilemma cases, and it is underscored that depending on the circumstances, there might be several ways to do the right thing.
‘There is no right or wrong answer, but it’s interesting to listen to people’s ideas’, Jane says while explaining the importance of challenging people instead of telling them directly that they are wrong.
We discuss one particular case used for all the workshops, and Charlie, a local Chinese ethics counterpart asks her: ‘So there are no right or wrong answers for the case? You just have to facilitate the discussion?’.
133 Jane replies: ‘Yes, but it’s difficult because you have your own opinion also, but try to keep that out of it… but of course, if someone suggests something illegal, you can say that ‘I as a Ferring employee would maybe to this’…’.
Charlie nods a lot and says ‘Ahh… To try and guide them’. Jane nods in reply.
The next day, in a different train-the-trainer workshop – this time about the Leading with Integrity Workshop for managers, we again discuss the dilemma cases. Ken – another local ethics counterpart – asks what we should do as facilitators if there are
disagreements about the right way to handle the dilemma cases. Jane replies that we can try to challenge those with different approaches and make them reflect on it. ‘So we don’t have to give them the final answer?’ asks Jill, another local counterpart who is also participating in the workshop. ‘Noooo’, Jane replies, shaking her head. ‘We don’t?’, Ken asks, and Jane shakes her head again. All the participants nod, but they also look a bit confused.
Although Jane is rather firm regarding how they should facilitate the dilemma case discussions, she keeps emphasizing that the participants should make the workshop their own and adjust it in a way that works in their own context.67
Six months later, I return to China for three weeks; this time alone. In an interview with Charlie, who participated in the abovementioned training sessions, we start talking about the Ferring Philosophy Workshop, and he is still struggling with the Global Ethics Office approach of not supplying ‘right answers’ for the dilemma cases.
‘Actually, I have also thought about that since the last time, and Jane [the ethics officer]
also mentioned that there is no right or wrong answer for every dilemma (…) but for some things, we should have a right or wrong answer’, he says and then explains that after the training six months ago, they had had an internal discussion within the local group of HR participants where they discussed and shared their fear of confusing the employees. They were afraid that employees might think that there will be no right or wrong answer for anything they do, and that it is up to them to choose. ‘We say that it all depends on your judgment, but sometimes, personal judgment is not always right, so…’.
67 Based on field notes from first field trip to China, Autumn 2017.
134 He gives me a serious look. ‘No matter what kind of dilemma, we do not have the answer for them. And no matter what solution people say, then we say that the purpose is that we challenge each other. Because last time, Jane said that the most important part is that we challenge each other…’
Charlie is clearly worried that in the end, if all you do is challenge the participants, and you never tell them what is right or wrong, that people will think that they can do whatever they want and that it all depends on their own judgment. ‘Because [if in] every scenario [dilemma case] we finish, we don’t tell them what kind of thing they need to do.
So I’m just afraid after a lot of rounds of... that people – especially senior people – will think, ‘Why are we doing this?’ (…) because at the end there is no answer for this, because everybody can be right’.68
The Ethics Office’s approach to dilemma case discussions that echoes the Danish ethos of
empowerment and moral education, with its emphasis on individuals taking responsibility for their decisions and judgments, a philosophy held in high esteem in Scandinavian societies, is perceived as liability in the local Chinese context. This approach, which refuses to give participants ‘the right answers’ is seen as not offering the employees any clear guidance on what is right and what is wrong.
What the Danish trainers saw as ‘empowerment’ the Chinese saw as ‘anything goes’.
In order to understand this insight, I started out seeking answers in national culture differences as a window to understanding the Chinese reaction to the ethics program.
Literature on the Chinese educational system and the Chinese learner often describes the teaching style found here as more instructing and less encouraging of critical reflexivity than Western teaching styles (Chen and Lee 2008). While such dichotomist stereotypes surely leave out numerous important nuances (cf. Ryan 2010), the difference between the Chinese context, into which the ethics program enters, and the Scandinavian context from which the ethics program originates, may be the reason why the signified (notion of moral education) and its value changes as the signifier (the ethics workshop) enters this context.
What is noteworthy, however, is that the request for more guidance voiced at headquarters is repeated when discussing the ethics program in the Chinese subsidiary. Even more noteworthy is it that this
68 Interview with human resources officer, China, Spring 2018.
135 request for more guidance has not resulted in any of the ‘cross-cultural innovations’ (Brannen
2004:605) and adjustments of the ethics program, that I had expected to observe with the concept of recontextualization in mind. Rather, the ethics program is being complied with in the sense that regular ethics workshops are being conducted, but simultaneously, a competing program, similar to the
Leadership Principles at headquarters, is developed also in China:
During the second field visit in the Chinese subsidiary, local human resources officers were in the process of launching a new set of ‘local values’. The five local China values are: Accountability,
Collaboration, Trust, Respect and Excellence and thus similar to the Leadership Principles formulated at headquarters.69 Accounts of the need to make preferred behaviours and values more explicit and operational drive this work. Similarly to the aforementioned communication plan surrounding the global Leadership Principles that was developed at headquarters, along with each local China value also comes a detailed description as well as role model stories and a list of ‘do’s and don’ts’ to exemplify the values to Chinese managers and employees. The use of role model stories is a common trait in Chinese business contexts as a didactic means to convey a message in a very concrete yet indirect manner (Miller et al. 1997; Søderberg 2015:248). The development of the role model approach may have been a response to the need for more explicitness about preferred behaviours. While such a didactic tradition is fairly established in a Chinese context, this kind of storytelling may not be taking place in a headquarters context. However, the behavioural guidance for the individual values in China and in the Leadership Principles developed in Switzerland share a number of similarities. For example, note the instructions for the principle ‘collaboration’ included in the Leadership Principles as well as in the local China values in Table 6 below:
Table 6 - Comparison of behavioural guidance for ‘Collaboration’ in the Chinese subsidiary and Swiss headquarters
Behavioural guidance for ‘Collaboration’ in the China local values70
Behavioural guidance for ‘Collaboration’ in the Leadership Principles
1. Reach an agreement on all parties’ goals and put goals and common interests first.
2. Think from the big picture of whole company and make concessions even sacrifice if necessary.
PEOPLE MANAGERS
• Encourage dialogue and achieve collaboration among team members and different parts of the organization.
• Initiate and ensure functional/
69 The Leadership Principles are: Performance, Empowerment, Innovation, Accountability, Collaboration, Transparency and Purpose.
70 This guidance is part of an instruction for do’s and don’ts for each of the local Ferring China values.
136 3. Provide timely and positive feedback to
others’ requests for collaboration.
4. Take an initiative to care others’ needs, ideas and feelings and show empathetic thinking in collaboration.
5. Welcome inputs from many diverse sources and demonstrate inclusion and diversity.
6. See team value and appreciate the efforts and contributions from others.
7. Put your team's success above individual success and share the successful honor and rewards with your team.
8. Take an initiative to establish interpersonal networks both inside and outside
department, even company.
9. Explore collaboration mode and mechanism with the company's internal and external stakeholders, cultivate long-term partnership, achieve all-win situation.
10.Actively take the initiative and propose a collaboration mechanism improvement solution when the responsibility is
ambiguous in cross-functional collaboration.
geographies collaboration.
• Acknowledge and recognize successful cross-functional/cross-geographies collaboration results.
• Proactively support others to achieve common goals.
INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTORS
• Proactively share your ideas and resources to support the work of your colleagues, within and outside your department.
• Seek opportunities for collaboration
with different teams, functions and geographies.
• Show consideration and respect when dealing with others.
• Seek others’ inputs and involvement, listen and understand their viewpoints and motives.
Although the Leadership Principles distinguish between individual contributors and managers, the instructions around cross-departmental collaborations, recognizing success and showing consideration and respect in the interaction with others are very similar to the preferred behaviours listed under the Chinese local value of ‘Collaboration’.
While global trends in leadership styles and concepts presumably play a significant role in the similarity that I observed between the Leadership Principles developed at headquarters and the local values and preferred behaviours communicated to the staff in the Chinese subsidiary, these new initiatives appear to be responses to similar requests for operationalizing Ferring´s ethics program. These similar
responses occur in both China and Switzerland despite general assumptions that a company
headquarters located in Switzerland would be closer to Scandinavian culture than a Chinese subsidiary.
137 Hereby, I reiterate Brannen’s (2004) argument that static notions of foreignness and similarity are less useful in explaining how ‘firm offerings’, including values-based policies, will be received and dealt with when introduced into contexts that differ from where they originated. At the same time, however, neither at headquarters nor at the Chinese subsidiary does the recontextualization described by Brannen fully occur. Instead of remoulding the ethics program and inscribing it into local cultural understandings, the Swiss headquarters and the Chinese react by developing new competing programs, albeit of different kinds.
Thus, although the Chinese national culture perspectives that I brought out in this section may explain a part of what happens when the Scandinavian ethics program travels to the Chinese subsidiary, national culture alone does not explain why a similar, alternative program was developed at the Swiss
headquarters. Some other characteristics thus seem to come into play, and it is to these characteristics that I now turn.