CASE N°2
« Corruption: The international evolution of new management challenges “
School year 2013 - 2014
Introduction
Since the phenomenon of globalization, companies that decided to broaden their horizons have to face multiple challenges and their management functions need some adaptations. While going abroad, companies may become concerned with the subject of corruption that makes the business with foreign countries even more complicated. Even if there is a willingness to fight and reduce the corruption across the world, companies must be aware that this subject exists and must take it into account while dealing with foreign companies, their efforts to understand and adapt to local corruption influencing their success of
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In order to draw that line companies should look at three different aspects. First, the international laws about gifts and bribes must be carefully analysed. Second, companies should gather information in regard to what is permitted by the local culture. Last but not least, companies must look carefully at their CSR strategy in order to see which kind of gifts there are ready to accept in order to be in line with their core values.
After analysing those three aspects, companies will be able to draw a line between gifts and bribes, using an ethical relativism or an ethical absolutism (Bricoe, Schuler and Tarique, 2012). This list must be integrated to a gift policy (anti-corruption code; see Appendix 2) that must to be well communicated, accepted and used by all members of the company. In top of that, the company should put in place controls system in order to check if the anti-corruption code is respected. The role of the international human resources management function is therefore crucial. The IHRM function needs to understand the different cultures the company is dealing with, to tolerate the cultural diversity while avoiding moral recklessness. This will ask the managers to conduct deep researches about the cultural differences and to train people concerning the anti-corruption code.
Are donations to politicians and political parties a form of corruption? Should donations be prohibited?
Donations to politicians and political parties appears in
Mr. Chong knows about recent cases of corporate bribery in Malaysia and in the retail industry. There had been scandals regarding foreign investors who bribed public officials or financed government programs to obtain business privileges or competitive advantage (Inkpen, 2010). Moreover, there was a recent case of bribery involving a Jextra’s country manager in the Philippines. More likely, this manager also encountered similar ethical dilemmas like Mr. Chong. Some individual factors that may have driven him to act unethically in the Philippines could have been pressure from the company to expand and gain competitive advantage in the region. Alternatively, he might have simply wanted to advance his career as a country manager, lacked of ethics or did not know the local laws regarding bribery. Additionally, he might not have received or requested support from the top management regarding the social and ethical issues raised in the Philippines. Mr. Chong, as an experienced manager, should have anticipated that he would encounter legal and ethical risks in Malaysia.
It would be convenient to start this research paper by stating that corruption is a challenge mainly for businesses in developing countries and that it is unrelated to the current affliction of the economy in the United States. It would also be convenient to claim corruption has declined in America as a result of awareness raising campaigns and the numerous anti-corruption laws. But none of those aforementioned statements would be true. Corruption is not the exception, but rather the rule in today’s business practices. In 2004, Daniel Kaufmann, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution and former director at the World Bank, calculated an index of "legally corrupt" manifestations which is defined as the extent of undue influence
It can be very confusing to decide that giving and accepting corporate gifts are ethical or not, it requires care and attention to understand the society’s sensitivities.
Many ethical issues have been surfacing in the last decade due to the hand in hand prosper of international business globalization. The ethical concerns include corruption, bribery, human rights issues among many others. Business ethics is a form of professional ethics or applied ethics that examines moral or ethical problems that arise in a business enviroment. It involves the application of moral behavior to business situations (Adeyeye, 2012 p 22). Bribery is the offering, receiving, soliciting, and giving of something of value in order to influence an action of an official or company in offering of legal or public duties. A bribe is a gift that is bestowed in order to influence the recipients conduct and the extent of the influence
However, employees should take note that “bribery and corruption undermine society and can have a devastating impact on the economic prosperity of local communities” (WorleyParsons, 2014, p. 8). As noted by Shulman (2014), “bribery in international commercial transactions is an issues that deserves attention because of its far-reaching negative repercussions” (p. 719). Corruption involves the fraudulent acts performed by those typically with some authority, and using their power to undermine the legal business practices. Corruption and bribery could lead to fines and imprisonment for those who are involved, as well as it will tarnish the reputation of WorleyParsons. Therefore, it is in the best interest of employees to know the difference between accepting gifts and bribes and prevent corruption and bribery from
International businesses need to be cautious of the risk of damaging their reputation and any corruption they can be involved in. Inefficient regulations and bribes are a few examples of activities that would be considered corruptions and it can cause great harm to the business and everyone who works for them.
Is not a surprise that society relationship with business continues to evolve over the decades, expectation of business can vary depending on what interest groups advocate. With more access to education, discussions emerge on whether there can be a solution to the problem. In society is expected that everyone acts ethically according to the standards of societies (11), but when corruption scandals erupts, demand for government action become prevalent. For Latin America corruption is a significant issue that continues to be affect the region in major proportions. According to The Economist corruption in the region has historic roots and continues to hold ground; however there are signs of moderate change (The Economist). When The Odebrecht scandal erupted for many it was the tip of the iceberg. Odebrecht is Latin Americas largest construction conglomerate; many had praised the company for its outstanding business practices. Unfortunately with emerging allegations that
Corruption is recognized as a contemporary problem in the international community currently. Corruption can take kinds of types that can include graft, bribery, embezzlement and extortion. For its influence, the United Nations international crime prevention center claimed that corruption has the threaten ability and negative impact on social, political and economic development and the value of morality, social stability and security of the world(Das, 2016). Corporate corruption is defined as any
While there are many various global issues that affect the International Human Resource Management to run efficiently, there are two key concepts that play a major role in understanding how to approach them with cohesive and a well coherent strategy; they are the International Human Recourse Management Strategy and Understanding the Cultural Environment. In the International Resource Management strategy, many companies will do their research in finding companies that offer the
There are various reasons why corruption takes place and takes hold. Sometimes it is due to the fact that officials are simply not paid very much and so they need to supplement their salaries with money from bribes. Sometimes the bureaucratic system is set up in such a way that officials simply refuse to carry out their duties unless they are ‘encouraged’ by being offered bribes. In other cases it is actually part of the tradition and culture of a country to give and receive ‘gifts’ in order to get anything done. In some cases companies from less corrupt countries allegedly engage in bribery in order
The development of national and international bribery legislation and regulation has been a slow process spanning many centuries, stemming from the recognition of Piracy as the first and true international crime (Duhaime’s Law Dictionary, 2015). Although wide agreement exists on the detrimental impacts of bribery and corrupt practices, many individual countries and transnational industries (including that of civil engineering) fear implementation of tough anti-bribery legislation will cause unfair competitive disadvantages compared to their counterparts from countries where foreign bribery is not criminalised (OECD Observer, 2012).
Mauro (1995) conducted a research based on a cross-country data to evaluate causes of corruption worldwide. In “Corruption and Growth”, he describes the relationship between corruption and economic growth of different countries over the period 1971-1979 and 1980-1983. In his research, Mauro used indices related to corruption from Business International Corporation which sells indices to banks, companies, and investors. The indices are based on the responses of the BI’s analysts from more than 70 countries, and they reflect analysts’ perspective on conditions in a country. The indices have values between 1 and 10, and higher values correspond to a better quality of institutions. Mauro has used nine indices, which, in his opinion, are the best determinants of institutional efficiency: political change (a change in institutional framework due to elections), political stability (disintegration of political activities), probability of opposition group takeover (probability of the opposition to gain power), stability of labor (possibility of labor disruption), relationship with neighboring countries, terrorism, legal system (efficiency of labor environment), red tape (bureaucracy), corruption. Mauro separated those nine indices into two groups based on how closely the indices are correlated. The first group is labeled as bureaucratic efficiency and includes variables such as legal system, red tape, and corruption. The second group of variables is labeled as political stability and
Most of the companies, when doing international negotiations, will face corruption at some point. The ethical principles of the company, if correctly implemented, is the factor that will help them make to take the right
Everyday U.S. managers in developing countries face the dilemma of furthering their business concerns in countries such as India, China, Russia and Mexico where bribery is commonplace while at the same time trying to ensure that they do not violate their companies code of conduct or worse the government’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). It is a fine line they walk. This paper will help those managers by explaining what bribery is, why it is thought to be an issue, show recently where companies have bribed and been caught as well as offer suggestions that will enable the U.S. manager in Mexico to accomplish what bribery accomplishes but is not unethical or illegal or in violation of a company policy that prohibits bribery.
Corruption is not new, existing from the beginning of time, affecting not only public officials, but all human interaction in many different forms (Choi et.al. 2010). It is believed that developing countries are at a higher risk for corruption which ultimately limit investment and growth, leading government to face major challenges in financing its day to day operation (Rose-Ackerman, 1999). However, corruption is not only found in developing countries, democracies such as the USA, France, Germany and Japan have also seen several corruption scandals over the past decades and had also fought against changes that could eliminate or reduce the perception of corruption, for example, over 70 elected members of Chicago local government have been charged and imprisoned on corruption charges . In 2016 New York airwave exploded when three high ranking NYPD police officers were arrested and charged for corruption and the mayor currently under investigation (Cohen et.al 2016). Many argued that campaign funding had led many politicians to become corrupt, therefore to reduce this power, more transparency is need. However, when this reform was introduced in the USA Senate through a campaign reform bill, the US senate voted against it (Beckel, 2010). This demonstrate that politicians around the world (develop and developing countries) are unwilling to reform legislation therefore ensuring they are in a position of power even if this is gain through favours.