Abstract:

International business research often treats ethics in culturally proximate regions as governed by shared traditions, obscuring how distinct institutional environments shape moral practice. Drawing on 45 interviews with senior Muslim and Christian executives in Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt, we develop a multi-level model of ethical practice. We show that shared virtue vocabularies (reputation, patience) and relational practices (intermediation) are systematically re-coded, acquiring distinct functional meanings across coordination voids (Lebanon), security voids (Iraq), and procedural voids (Egypt). These void types generate three field-consistent patterns of ethical bricolage: navigational, survivalist, and hierarchical. We introduce legitimacy calibration as the micro-level mechanism through which majority–minority positioning shapes the amplification, breadth, and visibility of ethical signaling within each pattern. The study reconceptualizes institutional voids as qualitatively distinct bottlenecks, proposes a practice-level dimension of institutional distance, and highlights the limits of standardized compliance templates in fragile and plural markets.

Please choose your submission type: Full Paper

Primary Track: International Business and International Management

Keywords: Internationalization: theories;Internationalization: negotiation issues;International: business;International: management;International: cross-cultural issues

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Dr. Bachar Moughayt