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ABSTRACT. The plurality of languages and ethnicities, the geographic fragmentation, the predominant Roman Catholic religion, together with the still relatively short experience in nationhood account for a very peculiar understanding of "business ethics" in the Philippines. The rapid growth and liberalization of the economy, coupled with the inequitable distribution of wealth, the destruction of the environment and corruption are the main ethical concerns. Businesspersons and the academe endeavor to find creative solutions for these unique challenges.
1. The semantics of business ethics
The Philippines is a multi-lingual society which, until the late 1980s, had three official languages - Pilipino, English and Spanish in addition to about eighty-five other languages and dialects, depending on one's linguistic criteria (McArthur, 1992; Gonzales, 1992). Spanish has since then ceased being an official tongue; for despite the country's having been a colony of Spain for more than 350 years, Spanish was never really widelyspoken in the archipelago and it was retained almost exclusively for historical reasons. English first gained ground during the American period in the early 1900's as the medium of public instruction and of government. Due to the influence of schools and the media, compounded by technological developments in the telecommunications sector, the survival of English in the country is as of the moment assured. Pilipino resulted from a political decision taken in the mid 1940's to adopt Tagalog as the national language. Although at the time of its institution, Pilipino or Tagalog was not the most widely used among the local tongues, and the reality of life has now finally caught up with the formality of the law.
Nevertheless, there are other equally important elements to be reckoned with in the informal Filipino linguistic landscape, aside from Pilipino, English, and Spanish. We have to consider, in the first place, the dense and farreaching network (guanxi) set-up by several generations deep of Chinese immigrants whose mother tongue is Fookienese. Representing less than 1 percent of the population, or less than 700,000 in absolute numbers, ethnic Chinese nonetheless contribute 40 percent to the total business output of the local economy, or approximately $30 billion to the GDP (Roman and Sebastian, 1996). Very much in currency is a group of six taipans, George S. K. Ty, John Gokongwei, Lucio...