ABSTRACT
Maxwell (1990) observes that the philosophy of international ethics is at an embryonic stage of development (p. 1), and identifies a major gap in present-day conceptualizations of international interactions: “Certainly in the contemporary world of interdependent nations, the meager theoretical development of the concept of international morality presents a major intellectual challenge” (p. 2). As the occasions for ambiguity in moral reasoning and moral responsibility multiply in a culturally diverse but highly interconnected and interdependent global environment, ethics is a subject which confronts communication scholarship at a variety of levels of interactional analysis. Current communication research on the subject is confined, though, almost exclusively to international business interactions, particularly to those of transnational corporations (TNCs). There is relatively little research that directly addresses the ethics of diplomacy and negotiation in contemporary global interactional processes.
