Business#2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Business#2 - Essay Example But this is not the case. For instance, while bribery is illegal in Indonesia, its public officials are susceptible to the act because the government pays them low wages. In a case study, Richard R. Gesteland, Georg F. Seyk (2002) documented: A foreign company headquartered in Singapore had to send technicians to Indonesian factories on a regular basis. About half of the company’s techs had to slip a fifty dollar bill to the Jakarta airport immigration official on duty in order to get an entry visa stamped in their passports. (p. 79) Sometimes cultural factors also come into play wherein norms in some countries dictate gift-giving or entertainment as important in transacting business. This is partly the reason why the degree as to which bribery is perceived as immoral is different from country to country. People who engage in bribery points to this fact, arguing that there is a blurry line between bribery and simple gift-giving: In the US, for instance, there are several kinds of payments that fall on the borderline of legality and illegality. In light of all these, bribery is customarily considered an unethical activity and, rightfully, the act is outlawed in all countries. (Donaldson & Dundee 1999, p. 225) No society can have the custom of bribery, because by its nature it is a covert practice that involves unfairness, harm to some and unearned benefit to others. Wojciech Gasparski and Leo Ryan (1996) stressed that bribery can never be justified as ethically proper because it is a means by which people get special treatment in preference to others for no other reason that that they pay bribes. (p. 332) Bribery corrupts both the giver and the receiver. Furthermore, it undercuts efficiency in the market, skews the allocation of goods and resources, often imposes unjust costs on third parties, and leads to further corruption, since such payments are not legal and cannot be reported using generally accepted accounting procedures. Today, the issue of