Bribery is in fact considered a pragmatic cost of conducting business (Martin et al. 200). Bribery is considered a form of deception used for gaining unfair advantages over those who act by the norms that govern transactions. If bribery was a simple cost of conducting business, then it could be clearly stated within the contract. However, this is not the case. Bribery is not disclosed in this way because this would deprive it of the unfairness that leads people to engage in it. It is for this reason that bribery that is brought to light, irrespective of the country, is a scandal and a source of shame.
Undoubtedly, bribery raises questions of ethical concern in any given country. Essentially, bribes constitute an unfair marketing method whose motive revolves around circumventing accepted legal business rules for assurance of completion of self-interested commercial gains. In particular transactions, bribery disadvantages organizations unfairly and make them lose potential sales. Moore generally, this action undermines the theory of market competition where the seller offering the best product or service at the moderate price ought to win the sale. When government officials conduct bribery business, it affects the public contracts, the extra cost of the bribe also generally passes on the taxpaying public through a sales price higher than under normal competition. Over time, such practices can undermine confidence in governmental process and institutions.
Bribery presents a curious ethical issue the global community since the laws nearly all nations already outlaw the practice, albeit using various definitions. Despite such broad conceptual agreements, reality proves markedly different, as many national legal prohibitions lack effective enforcement, particularly in countries with limited resources or essentially corrupt administration. Historically, individual cases occasionally captured the attention of the public, but international bribery emerged as a significant ethical issue when investigations into the Watergate of US political scandal revealed almost 500 US companies with secret overseas accounts used for bribes or other improper purposes (Westbrook, 489). The Congressional hearing led the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, in 1976 requiring accurate record keeping and extending US law extraterritorially to permit criminal prosecution of US companies and individuals involved in bribing foreign government officials.
In conclusion, bribery, and facilitating payments appear to violate the same deontological principle. Viewed regarding the teleological outcome, the payments differ in scale, but both types may prove objectable. Facilitating payments become systematically corrosive to market competition and representative government institutions. Reduction of costs leads a firm to supply products of inferior quality. If the preservation of the profit margin is achieved by an increase in the price of the contact achieved through bribery, then the prices to the final consumer would become higher, which also could reflect on reducing sales for the business that paid the bribes.
Works Cited
Bixby, M. B. (2010). Lion Awakes: The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act-1977 to 2010, The. San Diego Int'l LJ, 12, 89.
Westbrook, A. (2011). Enthusiastic Enforcement, Informal Legislation: The Unruly Expansion of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Georgia Law Review,45(2), 489.
Martin, K. D., Cullen, J. B., Johnson, J. L., & Parboteeah, K. P. (2007). Deciding to bribe: A cross-level analysis of firm and home country influences on bribery activity. Academy of Management Journal, 50(6), 1401-1422.
