Behaviorally harmonized ethical discussions for socially responsible decision making: A counter-argumentative team approach

Abstract

Decision making with cross-cultural diversity is a real challenge as well as an opportunity in the world of business and management. Interaction of stakeholders from different countries and cultures is inevitable for successful business transactions. This paper focuses to compare argumentative discussions with behavioral harmonized team synergy for socially responsible decision making (SRDM) in multicultural settings. It is organized around cross-level theoretical and practical teamwork analysis for accelerating cross-cultural collective mind benefits, ruling-out the destructive factors of cultural distance yielding socially responsible decisions. Specifically, on the basis of a theoretical framework and in-depth analysis of inducing and inhibiting factors of mind sourcing methods of brainstorming, crowd-sourcing, and team meeting, this research yields a feature-rich generic technique, which endeavors holistic approach to mind sourcing and cross-cultural logics. The study proposes a conceptual framework for a future multi-dimensional empirical testing and a practical technique, anticipated to help multinational organizations and international entrepreneurs to execute group work productively for facilitation of behaviorally harmonized ethical discussion (BHED), synergy, and ultimately designing corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs with SRDM by the cross-cultural teams. The proposed model integrates individual culture-based features and group-level processes under a common umbrella of BHED and SRDM.