Bribery and corruption is a way of life in many countries. These practices affect the way international business is regularly conducted. However, in most of these countries, it is illegal to offer or receive bribes or engage in corrupt practices. Yet corrupt practices are a part of the ‘culture’ of ‘doing businesses. Unless companies ‘conform’ to such practices, in many cases, international business cannot be transacted.
This essay will attempt to provide discussion about bribery and corruption in international trade example in vary different point of view in according to the principal ethical system suchlike religious, philosophical and ‘natural’. It will be analyse the case of Siemens bribery scandal related to ethical issues.
Bribery is a most important issue of concern to many companies. Incident of bribery vary across many countries but everyone has a different concept about it as Hong Kong and Greek managers are less critical of bribery in certain situations than Americas. Paying bribery carries with it a great risk to damaging the company reputation with the country which the briberies are paid and at home. Moreover, there is also the risk that the corporate culture of the company will become more open-minded of several of other practices at the legal issues. There is also evidence to suggest that those countries with the reputation for bribery and corruption damage themselves as it reflects in their economic growth has a low rates for high level of corruption suchlike Nigeria.
Corruption can be grand in which run through government ministers, head of state and senior officials, it is al about distortion of decision making “where there is a lot of government, there is a lot of bribery.” (The Economist 2006 p132). O...
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Anti-bribery laws in the U.S. were established to prevent the rampant corruption exhibited in the Airbus case study. Similar anti-corruption laws do not exist in many of the host countries the U.S. does business with. Host county’s laws and regulations take on different forms especially when power, money and politics are involved, manipulating or creating a new set of rules to benefit their own selfish needs. Savvy sales negotiators, like those at Airbus, seek opportunities through loop holes, off shore accounts and large sums of bribery money, to entice country officials or others with the authority to make purchases to commit to Airbus. A more uniform worldwide approach to international laws needs to be adapted, implemented and more importantly enforced, so all companies involved can conduct fair business practices under the same set of rules.
With the development of international business, more and more companies get large profits in multinational cooperation, also led to a serious corruption problem at the same time. One of the most famous is the Siemens scandal. Although there are many laws to stop transnational bribery, many companies have to rely on bribes to win contracts. Some managers consider the social resources are limited and the distribution exist competition. A bribe is the easy way to obtain the resources that the companies original may not get. Furthermore, some of the company 's products have serious quality problem, the leaders of production will bribe prosecutors. Then the products into the market smoothly, however, this behavior will lead to unfair competition
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...ht, J. R. (2012). Ethics and the Conduct of Business. In Ethics and the conduct of
Bribery and corruption are commonly thought of in relation to politics and governmental corruption. The truth is, bribery and corruption raise their ugly heads in a broad range of situations, from executive contracts, to gaining freedoms, services and nepotisms. Sports is another ground in which bribery and corruption commonly occur. Because the very nature of bribery and corruption is private, the general public absorbs only of those few schemes in which the parties have been caught.
Boatright, J. R. (2009). In D. Musselwhite, D. Repetto, & P. Walsh (Eds.), Ethics and the conduct of business (Sixth ed.). New Jersey: Prentice Hall. (Original work published 1997)
In the business industry, there are ethical dilemmas that occur on a daily basis. Some ethical dilemma can include stealing or even having fraudulent documents in order to get an unfair advantage within the organization. Another ethical dilemma that has been brought into the light is bribery. What makes bribery unique is that in various parts of the world, bribery has become an acceptable behavior whereas other parts of the world people would consider that as unethical behavior. In order to understand what is acceptable or not when trying to bribe public officials, we must understand the principles of what is considered to be ethical or unethical.
Seawell, Buie 2010, ‘The Content and Practice of Business Ethics’, Good Business, pp. 2-18, viewed 22 October 2013, .
Bribery poses difficulties on moral grounds because it is incompatible with the principal of human equality and the fundamental right for individuals to be treated with equal respect and concern. For an institution to adhere to this principle, they must operate with fairness and impartiality: nobody should have access to influence that is not accessible to all. Bribery operates as part of a mechanism by which influence is only available ...
Comparison of business ethical traditions in different countries. Also on the basis of their respective GDP and [Corruption rankings].
Ethics is concerned with the study of morality and the application of reason to elucidate specific rules and principles that determine right and wrong for a given situation (Crane & Matten, 2010). Since law does not necessarily cover the morality of many controversial issues, moral reflection ought to be performed on any action, regardless of its lawfulness. The growing power of business in today’s society has enabled businesses to significantly impact the world. Hence, business ethics is highly relevant as it could determine whether businesses contribute or cause harm to the society at large.
Over the last few years, the issue of corruption--the abuse of public office for private gain--has attracted renewed interest, both among academics and policymakers. There are a number of reasons why this topic has come under recent inspection. Corruption scandals have toppled governments in both major industrial countries and developing countries. In the transition countries, the shift from command economies to free market economies has created massive opportunities for the appropriation of rents, excessive profits, and has often been accompanied by a change from a well-organized system of corruption to a more chaotic and deleterious one. With the end of the cold war, donor countries have placed less emphasis on political considerations in allocating foreign aid among developing countries and have paid more attention to cases in which aid funds have been misused and have not reached the poor. And slow economic growth has persisted in many countries with malfunctioning institutions. This renewed interest has led to a new flurry of empirical research on the causes and consequences of corruption.
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The existence of bribery and unethical behavior is rampant in the world market and may not change overnight. The question of bribery has been distilled in business literature as a question of ethics. In this situation at the airport with the customs officer, it is important to distinguish between business ethics and personal ethics. In a business ethics situation, the Foreign Corruption Practices Act would prohibit offering any bribe to the custom office – for example to free a shipment of goods that was lost in red tape (Pitman & Sanford, 2006). Most companies also have policies against bribery as well. In this situation, however the main issue at hand is that of personal ethics. When in a situation where your company is unknown and there is no business being conducted, normal business ethics and laws (including FCPA) do not apply only personal ethical standards.