Intercultural Seminars

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Values are a reflection of religious beliefs for most people. We have previously heard of references to right and wrong as applied to the ideals and customs of a society. Values relate to a range of similar topics, and they may pertain to areas such as cleanliness, education, health care, and criminal justice. Such values are often very personal and as such can have a variety of interpretations. The more interpretations there are, the more likely it is that miscommunication will occur. Ethics can be considered as standards of conduct that reflect moral beliefs as applied to both ones personal life and ones business life. Delaney suggests that now more than ever, a code of ethics is essential within the business environment. When this code of ethics is missing or if it is not enforced, chaos and financial ruin for everyone associated are often the result. A quality code of ethics is presently being recognized as an intrinsic and critical component in any business environment. Newspapers are filled with reports of scandalous, unconscionable, unethical behavior that has led to the downfall of otherwise successful businesses.1

TENTATIVE SEMINAR SCHEDULE

As indicated earlier, all employees who have direct contact with people in other cultures will participate in these continuing seminars. That means that we need to have two identical three-day seminars scheduled at each site. These seminars will be conducted in the cities shown in Table 3.

TABLE 3. FOREIGN-CITY SEMINARS

City Melbourne Rio de Janeiro Beijing Hamburg Tokyo Warsaw Oslo Madrid First Seminar May 2-4 May 9-11 May 16-18 May 23-25 June 6-8 June 13-15 June 20-22 June 27-29 Second Seminar July 5-7 July 11-13 July 18-20 July 25-27 August 1-3 August 8-10 August 15-17 August 22-24

Denise C. Delaney, Business Ethics and Workplace Compliance, Empire Publishing Company, San Francisco, 2009, p. 35.