Unethical Activity: Bribery - Essay Example

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 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 to which bribery is perceived as immoral is different from country to country. People who engage in bribery point 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.

Why Unethical? 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 than 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 bribery has reached global proportions with the advent of globalization. That is why world organizations such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have taken steps and concerted efforts to reduce its incidence in international business transactions.

In 1996, the OECD passed a resolution requiring that all its member countries pass laws prohibiting the tax-deductibility of bribery in foreign transactions undertaken by their domestic firms. (Donaldson & Dunfee, p. 226) The United States is also spearheading the drive to eradicate bribery to level the playing field in international business. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is the cornerstone of this policy which made it illegal for any American company to pay bribes to foreign higher government officials. Non-governmental organizations had also been formed such as Transparency International to serve as a watchdog in support of curbing bribery and corruption across the globe.