II) Explanations of these differences

A) The American society is less ethical than the Japanese one

1) What is the ethical responsibility?

There is a genuine gap between the USA and the rest of the developed and capitalist countries about ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) : even if the interest in CSR has increased in Japan, public and business interests in business ethics and CSR have increased even more in America. The first explanation for this growing interest and for this difference is that there is more misconduct to worry about because the American society is less and less ethical. Moreover, unethical behaviour is more likely to be exposed and become a genuine scandal in the USA than in Japan which is a more formal and wise society. To sum up, Americans seem less ethically responsible.

But what is the ethical responsibility? Responsibility is a complex issue composed of different elements. First of all, it includes the elements of fulfilling obligations and abiding by the law. It is also the fact to be accountable to other people but over all the fact to be accountable to one's own conscience. According to this definition and all its ideas, Americans do not seem really very ethically responsible. They do not hesitate to transgress some rules or even their own values in order to make profits and to take a competitive advantage.

2) Several cases of business scandals

Several scandals permit to illustrate this idea. A series of ethical corporate scandals have damaged public confidence in business in the USA. For instance, Enron which was one of the world's leading energy company and the seventh largest American firm, went bankrupt in December 2001. This event and this collapse are the second largest corporate bankruptcy of the American history. But why this big corporation collapsed? The firm had created offshore entities in order to look more profitable than it actually was, even if it was strictly forbidden. When the scandal