All businesses, and especially multinational corporation (MNCs), should manage ethics. Most MNCs have codes of ethics, also called codes of conduct, to help employees understand what behavior is and is not ethical. To help ensure ethical behavior, employees should have ethics training. Top level managers need to support the code and lead by example with ethical behavior, ethical codes must be enforced, and violators should be punished.

A difficult challenge to MNC managers is the fact that different countries have different levels of ethical standards. For example, it is unethical to give bribes in America, but it is the way in which business is conducted in some countries. According to universalism, managers should make the same ethical decisions across countries, whereas relativism calls for decisions to be made based on the ethical standards of the particular country. Thus, the MNC manager using universalism would not give any bribes, whereas the manager using relativism would give bribes in some countries.

Although the United States has the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that defines illegal behavior, it is considered vague and confusing. So there are often no simple answers to what is ethical and not ethical. The increasing concern for global managerial ethics calls for a better understanding through cross-national comparisons and the need for a global mindset. To this end, and getting back to justification of unethical behavior, researchers have found that the same justifications presented earlier are used globally.

The global business world is increasingly emphasizing responsible leadership.