Abstract:

This study had the aim of examining the influence that national cultures have on the formulated business ethics and codes of conduct being implemented in multinational corporations. It is an undeniable fact that individual employees who make up the workforce come from different cultural backgrounds and orientations. In the light of this, it became more interesting to find out if their cultural backgrounds affect their ability to adhere to the ethics of the organizations they work for. The focus was on the national culture of Ghana and the imported business ethics by the management of multinational organizations operating in the country. Hofstede’s groundbreaking work and the GLOBE expanded scope study remains the largest study to examine national culture with selected countries specifically for the purpose of providing valuable guidance to individuals seeking to work effectively across such differences.The result as put forward by the various research data on this subject especially from Hofstede and the GLOBE shows that the national culture of Ghana does not necessarily affect the implementation and enforcement of the corporate ethics in multinational firms operating in Ghana. On the contrary, most of the multinational organizations come from a very strong and regulated corporate ethics environment established by legal regimes in their home country. It is also worth noting that most of the multinational firms conduct orientation for new employees and occasionally for old staff as well.

Keywords: Corporate Business Ethics, National Culture, Ghana, Employee orientation, organizational culture, Multinational corporations.

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