Entrepreneurial ethics in developing countries

Technological innovations, outsourcing of production to developing nations and their desire to improve business conditions often leads to compromising business and professional ethical standards in developing countries. Of course one of the problems arise from the fact that developing nations either do not have established ethical standards, or are rejecting the established ethics in favor of borrowing ethical standards from developed nations. The issue with the second approach is that those standards are ether misinterpreted or implemented in a way they were not intended originally. Companies are often at loss on which ethical guidelines they should follow and workers struggling with often strange interpretation of those guidelines. Some of the issues arise when ethical standards and laws are at odds, or the laws are discarded that create a vacuum in enforcing ethical principles. A few of those misinterpreted principles are discussed in this paper. The data was collected from newly minted entrepreneurs in a developing country. The development of universal ethical principles is suggested to overcome some of the issues faced by developing nations. Such ethical principles have to take into consideration multiple cultural norms, individual belief systems and good business practices where all stakeholders‘ interests are considered.