The phrase “God made man, man made money and money made man mad” will help in understanding bribery and corruption. The world has become tuned to the rhythms of money resulting in many problems. Money has made it difficult for humans to trace their humanity leading to the birth of bribery and corruption (Gorsira, Steg, Denkers & Huisman, 2018). People are using their resources to get favors and climb the social ladder at the expense of other people who are incapable of such resources. This means that, getting services is no longer based on merits but the people you know.
Corruption and bribery are ethical problems that the society has to deal with at all times. This is attributed to the fact that the participants in both bribery and corruption always want to keep their actions secret. The people in charge of giving services are always responsible for obeying and implanting the law, serving the concerns of the society and avoiding making damage. Corruption and bribery are unethical and have numerous negative not only in the society but also the business environment.
As an illustration, bribery and corruption can be seen in various field in our societies. These include government institutions and private organizations. Getting first hand services will depend on the amount of money one is willing to give. The birth of bribery and corruption in our societies have led to increase greed and power struggle. Bribery can be defined as an unethical practice where money or gift is offered in change for certain services or create influence. There are two types of bribery; passive and active bribery. An example of active bribery can be given by a person obtaining an inspection report without legal procedures or avoiding safety controls after paying an amount of money to the officials in charge of the operation (Xie, Qi, & Zhu, 2018). An example of a passive bribery can be given a security officer taking bribe from criminal to rob the place. Corruption is the abuse of power for private gain.
Ethics can be defined as a system of moral principles affecting the manner in which people make decisions. Ethics considers the following; living a good life, understanding one’s rights and responsibilities, knowing the language of right or wrong. Lastly, making a moral decision when faced with a situation. The concepts of ethics have been derived from societal values, religious beliefs, cultures and philosophies. Relationship existing between corruption, bribery and ethics is that, corruptors are manipulating the moral codes set by the society for personal gain.
Bribery and corruption are illegal and dishonest behaviors which are considered illegal (Sikka & Lehman, 2015). Asking about the reasons why people practice corruption and bribery may be considered naïve. The fact is, the main reason is due to personal gains and motivation. Corruption and bribery may result in an organization due to the following factors; lack of transparency, weak enforcement and policy implantations, insufficient opportunities and poverty. In an organization where employees are not treated equally and avoided, they are likely to engage in fraudulent activities to cover for the hard work that never get noticed by the management.
There are a number of reasons why people engage in corruption or accept bribes. First, people get bribed or practice corruption due to need for speed where they want to be serviced faster than the rest. This may make organizations to deliberately slow down certain services. Secondly, people engage in corruption and bribery due to convenience (Rose-Ackerman & Palifka, 2016). This may result due to the fact that some people find it hard to go the offices and follow protocols like other people. Fear is also a contributing factor. This arises from the fact that people fear that without paying bribes they won’t be helped.
Ignorance and unwillingness to learn may make people practice bribery and corruption. In most cases organizations and people engage in corruption and bribery to avoid business losses. This may include bypassing certain protocols established as laws and regulation (Pardo, 2017). Take for instance, a business may pay bribes to avoid taxes with an objective of making profits. Additionally, organizations may pay bribes when trying to bypass certain regulations such as quality assurance for the product to reach the consumers.
Ethical relativism identifies that the absolute truth in ethics varies from society to society and from person to person. According to David Hume, he believed that moral beliefs can be determined by sentiment/emotions rather than reason. Herodotus, a Greek Historian argued that every society has its own set of values which are considered best more than any other society. When it comes to ethical relativism, there are no moral absolutes (Asongu, 2017). This means that moral values of a society change over time. Corruption and bribery can’t be considered as part of a nation’s culture. This is because both corruption and bribery will only favor the rich and organizations with adequate resources. When corruption and bribery become part of a nation’s culture, there are consequences that the people will be experiencing. The major impacts of corruption and bribery in a country are; reduced quality in the services being offered to the society (Remer, 2017).
A place filled with corruption and bribery, people won’t be able to access quality services. This means that for one to get an access to quality services, he or must pay or bribe service providers. The areas that may be affected include electricity and distribution of resources. Other areas that may be affected include education and healthcare delivery. In a country where people have to pay to get quality services, the poor will continue being poor at the expense of the rich people.
In a society where corruption and bribery are being practiced, there will be lack of a proper justice system. In this scenario, rich people will be buying justice whereas poor people will be facing the full force of the law. In the evident that evidence has been found, the police department might interfere with the investigation process once they have been bribed by the perpetrators of the crime. Additionally, in a weak justice system, judges and attorneys may be bought at a price to rule in favor of the rich criminals at the expense of the poor defendant (Ljungblom & Lennerfors, 2018). Thirdly, corruption and bribery may lead to reduced chances of unemployment. This can be supported by the fact that government will be allocating resources that may not be enough to provide employment for the people. Furthermore, in countries with corruption and bribery, there will be poor hygiene and health resulting from poor infrastructural developments.
The poor-quality services delivered at the expense of people lives will reduced the general performance of the nation. Other impacts of corruption include increased pollution of the environment (Ljungblom & Lennerfors, 2018). All these impacts of corruption and bribery, the economic growth may be affected. The areas that will be affected include; reduction in FDI, reduced infrastructural development, differences in trade ratio and reduction in the GDP growth.
Kant believed in theory of deontology. According to this theory consequences of an action but the intentions matters. There are two claims when it comes to deontological theories. They include; the core source of moral goodness is the will and a good will is based on universal reasons (Gago-Rodríguez, Márquez-Illescas & Núñez-Nickel, 2018). According to this theory actions haven’t been classified as either right or wrong. This makes to it difficult for one to classify corruption and bribery as either a good or bad deed. From this theory, the consequences of significant.
In understanding this theory, Kant came up with a list of categorical Imperatives which act as a tap towards making decisions (Rose-Ackerman, 2018). Some of these categorical imperatives include the universality principle. According to this principle, if an action is right for others, then it will be right for us. From this, if a society sees corruption to be right then other people will consider it to be right. This raises the question, is bribery and corruption morally right or wrong? For a group of people, corruption and bribery may be right and for some it may be wrong. Another categorical imperative is treatment of humans as an end not as a means. Humans are rational beings and not nonliving things. According to this principle, treating human being as a means towards getting to something is morally wrong.
Virtue ethics emphasizes on a person’s character to be an important element when making decisions rather than the rules about the acts themselves (deontology) and consequences (consequentialism). According to this theory, a character of a person will determine the nature of decisions that he/she will be making when faced with a situation. This means that a person with high integrity will always know that accepting bribes or being corrupt is against his character. However, the only challenge when addressing virtue ethics is that there few people who will stick to their characters and avoid bribery or corruption (Sampath, & Rahman, 2018). From this explanation, a project manager will either accept or deny a bribe based on his moral character.
Consequentialism argues that an action is considered right or wrong based on the outcome. Meaning that when corruption yield good harvest then it should be considered a right action and bad when it yields bad results. When a project manager engages in corruption or accepts bribes, he will be putting his reputations and the company at risk. This may impact the audience such as the stakeholders negatively (Brown & Loosemore, 2015). From this illustration, all these theories have concluded that bribery is immoral.
Stopping corruption and bribery will involve the manager coming up with policies and strategies restricting any of these practices within the organization. If any employee is found, strict measures should be taken against him or her (Greenwood & Freeman, 2018). A policy that may be implemented is no business involving the organization should be carried out outside the organization. These business activities being done outside the premises of the organization may likely to end up in taking bribery or corruption.
Secondly, stopping corruption and bribery will require paying employees and recognizing their efforts through rewards without discriminating other workers. This will create a platform where employees feel like they are a part of the company (Gago-Rodríguez, Márquez-Illescas & Núñez-Nickel, 2018). The manager should come up with a smart technology within the organization. These technologies may include closed circuit television networks where actions of employees will be closely monitored. In any organization, the manger should be in apposition to trail any money that is not paid according to the rules and regulations of the company.
Monitoring the money will also prevent cases of employees altering records or deleting some of the records that have been fed into the system of the organization. Most importantly, the manager should know the type of employees he/she is working within the organization (Kang, Long, Zhang & Hao, 2017). This involves any third party that is associated with the organization. This will prevent cases of partnering with organization having cases of fraudulent activities that may affect the corporate of your organization. As the manager.
In Australia bribery of a foreign official is considered a criminal under section 70.2 the Schedule to the Criminal Code (Redlich, 2018). The criminal offence has the following elements which are; being offered a benefit, the benefit is not legitimate and influencing foreigner to obtain a business within the country. The befit doesn’t need to be given directly but in form of other favors (Greenwood & Freeman, 2018).In Australia the agencies in charge of monitoring bribery and corruptions are Australian Federal Police and the Office of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) (O’Connell, 2015).Other agencies include Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security and the Office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman.
In the United States of America, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977 was enforcement as a policy that would fight corruption and bribery of foreigners (Business Anti-Corruption, n.d). In this legislation, a person or organization can be held responsible for corporate liability, responsibility for third parties and extraterritoriality for corruption offences. There are three categories of anti-bribery provisions in this legislation. They include; issuer, domestic concern and organizations/person under territorial jurisdiction.
Conclusion
In conclusion, according to the ethical theories, bribery and corruption are highly unethical. This is because they go against the values and cultures of a society. With corruption and bribery, the rich will be benefiting at the expense of the poor. This can be explained by most African countries such as Kenya where corruption has been a menace since her independence. Leaders are making policies to favor them at the expense of the poor. From tis illustration, the government and organizations should come up with policies refuting bribery and corruption.
References
Asongu, S. A. (2017). Fighting Corruption when Existing Corruption Control Levels Count: What do Wealth-Effects Tell us in Africa?. Institutions and Economies, 53-74.
Brown, J., & Loosemore, M. (2015). Behavioral factors influencing corrupt action in the Australian construction industry. Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, 22(4), 372-389.
Business Anti-Corruption (n.d). US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).Retrieved from: https://www.business-anti-corruption.com/anti-corruption-legislation/fcpa-foreign-corrupt-practices-act/
Gago-Rodríguez, S., Márquez-Illescas, G., & Núñez-Nickel, M. (2018). Denial of Corruption: Voluntary Disclosure of Bribery Information. Journal of Business Ethics, 1-18.
Gorsira, M., Steg, L., Denkers, A., & Huisman, W. (2018). Corruption in organizations: Ethical climate and individual motives. Administrative Sciences, 8(1), 4.
Greenwood, M., & Freeman, R. E. (2018). Deepening Ethical Analysis in Business Ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 147(1), 1-4.
Kang, B. G., Long, K., Zhang, C., & Hao, J. L. (2017, December). Comparative study On The ethical perceptions of contractors and designers in the China construction industry. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 291, No. 1, p. 012024). IOP Publishing.
Ljungblom, M., & Lennerfors, T. T. (2018). Virtues and Vices in Project Management Ethics: An Empirical Investigation of Project Managers and Project Management Students. Project Management Journal, 49(3), 5-16.
O’Connell, D. (2015). The UK Bribery Act: Challenges and opportunities for Australian business. Governance Directions, 67(5), 311.
Pardo, I. (2017). Introduction: corruption, morality and the law. In Between Morality and the Law (pp. 9-26). Routledge.
Redlich H. (2018). Anti-Corruption and Bribery in Australia. Retrieved from: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=02c36883-d097-4d1b-82dc-cfad89766570
Remer, J. S. (2017). Bribery and Its Ethical Implications for Aid Workers in the Developing World. Science and engineering ethics, 23(1), 227-241.
Rose-Ackerman, S. (2018). Corruption in International Business. The Obligations of Multinational Firms. zfwu Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts-und Unternehmensethik, 19(1), 6-24.
Rose-Ackerman, S., & Palifka, B. J. (2016). Corruption and government: Causes, consequences, and reform. Cambridge university press.
Sampath, V. S., & Rahman, N. (2018). Bribery in MNEs: The Dynamics of Corruption Culture Distance and Organizational Distance to Core Values. Journal of Business Ethics, 1-19.
Sikka, P., & Lehman, G. (2015). The supply-side of corruption and limits to preventing corruption within government procurement and constructing ethical subjects. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 28, 62-70.
Xie, X., Qi, G., & Zhu, K. X. (2018). Corruption and New Product Innovation: Examining Firms’ Ethical Dilemmas in Transition Economies. Journal of Business Ethics, 1-19.
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