Bribery at Workplace - Coursework Example

Bribery at Workplace Ethical relativism simply refers to the notion that every group, community, culture and society of the world at large establishes its own ethical code and moral principles in the light of its needs and requirements, and expects the following of the same from all members. Consequently, code of ethics varies from one society to the other, where a universally condemnable could be normal or relevant for a community or culture, though observing of the same may invite the anger and displeasure of the individuals belonging to some other social group. The same is applied to offering and acceptance of bribery, which is unconditionally regarded as a reprehensible social evil in modern and developed societies, though openly practiced by an overwhelming majority of the people belonging to the third world countries. Consequently, the people of third world consider giving and taking bribery as a routine matter. Bribery serves as the undue favor, in the form of money, presents, or any undue or unethical performance, made by one or more individuals to some governmental official, personnel or authority in order to obtain unjust benefits and privileges from them. Legal dictionary defines bribery as “the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of something of value for the purpose of influencing the action of an official in the discharge of his or her public or legal duties.” Hence, both offering and receiving unjustified value against some unlawful purpose is stated to be bribery. Although aptly considered to be in the form of money, bribery could also be in form of some performance or abstinence from performing the acts one is bound to observe. For instance, a girl’s offering her physical charms to some high authority in order to receive some unjust privilege also comes under the definition of bribery, which is equally denounced by the moralists and law enforcing agencies as offering of money or gifts to the officials is censured. Being a social evil, bribery deprives the deserving individuals of their just rights by allocating and transferring it to the briber against the favors he has offered to acquire the benefit actually belongs to someone else. It is a social evil due to the very fact it invites and promotes injustices, inequalities and irregularities within a social establishment. Since the lawful owners of tangible or intangible assets are deprived of their privileges, they certainly raise revolt against the injustices being committed against them by the authorities. Such a perturbed state of affairs invites conflict between the deserving people and the unlawful possessors of their rights, paving the way towards chaos and anarchy in society. Like all political, social and economic sets up, the system in governmental institutions in the developed and developing countries is also quite opposite to one another. The bribery is a strict taboo in the developed nations, while it is a routine matter in the developing region of the globe. For instance, in the south Asian states of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and others, no one can even think of obtaining any legal document from any public office without bribery altogether. Macionis (2008) observes that corruption has become the essential part of the collective behavior of third world countries, where people do not consider it as a social evil any more. It is an open secret that the ill-behavior and voracity of the revenue officials in Pakistan is not a clandestine altogether; on the contrary, it is an open secret that no one can even dare to demand any land record from the revenue department and its personnel by paying the fee decided by the government (Zaidi, 2012). The same also came in my personal experience during my visit to the revenue department of India, where I had purchased a piece of land during my job as country manager in India five years back. I got an opportunity of visiting a land record office with my lawyer in order to sell my property I had bought to build a house for my family. As soon as I entered there, I found the low ranked personnel sitting on the earth in a courtyard. I astonishingly enquired from the lawyer about them, who informed me that these individuals were actual revenue personnel, which belonged to low grades, but had been bestowed with high powers due to the very fact that they could make any alterations in the land record-books out of their personal benefits. We proceeded to the personnel and demanded the record of the piece of land I possessed. The personnel remained engaged in their personal activities in a very slow motion. At last, my lawyer asked me to pay some specific amount of money in order to get the document. It was quite weird and strange for me, but I had some idea of corruption in India at massive scale, so I paid the amount demanded by him. Subsequently, I got the property record document within few minutes, but the document displayed the area shorter than that I had purchased few years back. I was at a perplexed state of affairs, and enquired from the personnel about it. He appeared to be adamant that the then recently introduced land reforms had shortened the size of my property. At last, the lawyer intervened and requested that nasty personnel to do some favor to me, against which I would offer some favors. There could be seen an obnoxious smile on his face, which was equally wicked and mysterious. The lawyer took me to the corner of the room from where we could see that corrupt personnel sitting on the floor in front of us. The lawyer informed me that if we paid him five thousand Indian rupees, we would extra piece of land that would be worth one hundred thousand Indian rupees. It was really startling for me, but being a rational person, I handed over the amount through lawyer, and obtained the document of the piece of land I had actually purchased in past. Since I had witnessed the entire corrupt revenue system with my own eyes, I did not make any delays in selling that property within a fortnight. Consequently, I successfully saved my skin from becoming further prey to the corrupt revenue system prevailing in the purported shining India claimed by its statesmen. During my engagements in sales procedure in India, I frequently observed the indigenous population offering and accepting bribes, which was not confined to one single institution only. Rather, the revenue, police, income-tax, agriculture and all public sectors appeared to be adversely encaged in the cruel clutches of bribery and corruption. I heartily dislike and abhor bribery both religious and moral points of view. Somehow, during my stay in India, I was not in a position to escape the same at any cost. As a result, I accidently got involved into bribery, though my opinion about this condemnable social evil is always clear that it is just a curse that could put into the foundations of a society into grave jeopardy. It is actually because of wide scale corruption that the poor countries are lagging far behind than the USA and Europe in all walks of life. Works Cited Macionis, John J. (2007) Sociology Eleventh Edition Pearson Prentice Hall Inc. 617-20 Zaidi, Mujtaba Haider (2012) Colossal Corruption in Revenue Department The Frontier Post 2012-06-02 Available at www.thefrontierpost.com/article/164572 The Free Dictionary (2012) Legal Definition of Bribery Available at http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/bribery Read More