Cross-cultural comparison of ethical reasoning of students in China and the United States

Abstract

ABSTRACTAs China advances, attitudes about ethical reasoning will continue to evolve from norms rooted in Confucianism, guanxi, and collectivism toward attitudes consistent with developed countries. With the lack of understanding of reasoning in China, business executives, professors, and students from developed countries rely on their society’s cultural norms to inform ethical reasoning. The purpose of this study was to examine cross-cultural ethical reasoning skills of the next generation of executives in the United States and China represented by students from mid-sized universities. Using the Accounting Ethical Dilemma Instrument [Thorne, 2000. The development of two measures to assess accountants’ prescriptive and deliberative moral reasoning. Behavioral Research in Accounting, 12, 139–169. https://aaajournals.org/loi/bria] and Hofstede’s [1991. Cultures and organizations. McGraw-Hill] taxonomy of cultural identities, the researchers determined that students from a public university in the United States exhibited higher reasoning skills than their Chinese peers. With the potential evolution of ethical reasoning in China, findings from this study may prove beneficial in the future of the convergence of Chinese and Western cultures.