Approaches to Conceptualizations of Ethics in a Global Context

Although being ethical refers to making decisions that practitioners could justify, there could be multiple and contradictory sources of information which guide decision-making. And this could be even more complicated in the global context. Public relations practitioners have been asked to be internal activists in the organizations in which they work—that is, they should advocate for the interests of publics to influence organizational decision-making. They have been asked to be aware of the problems of the Western approach to ethics and to engage with local publics because Western practices might not be applicable to non-Western conditions (and vice versa). A study conducted on a global-local hand-washing campaign was designed based on the following assumptions:

• Multinational corporations’ use of local-global integration: Multinational corporations would use global standardized worldwide development of best practices together with local responsiveness to customize practices to the local environment, organizational culture and people to achieve balanced public relations.
• Understanding culture: Understanding global publics requires knowing (a) the principles that guide what is valued in a culture, (b) the unwritten rules and guidelines that regulate conduct, and (c) the communication practices of the culture. Without understanding cultures, practitioners could not build emotional links with the local people who are affected by their practice.
• Culture-centered approach: It should begin with listening to subaltern global publics and using them as an agency to construct narratives which are useful to them.

The thematic analysis of the global-local hand-washing campaign run by the Global Public-Private Partnership made these findings:

• "Glocalization": The campaign ought to achieve consistency across all messages, goals and research methods worldwide. But they also tailored their media, strategies and tactics to different local publics.
• Understanding the marginalized: The campaigners gathered knowledge from those who lived in the communities, such as mothers and teachers through research. The researchers valued the indigenous knowledge from them although women remained under-valued in those communities. Also, the researchers hired were fluent in their local language, came from the same gender and spent time observing their domestic behaviors before conducting interviews about personal matters.
• Showing care is ethical: As a result of this research-driven campaign, the campaigners were informed by the real conditions facing the communities whose hand-washing behaviors needed to be altered. Their actively seeking to understand the communities and privileging local knowledge and experiences over their own assumptions was described as the portrayal of care and attentiveness which drives the ethical and effective dissemination of messages to the diverse global publics.