Cultural Relativism or Ethical Imperialism Essays

Cultural Relativism or Ethical Imperialism Essays Cultural Relativism or Ethical Imperialism Paper Cultural Relativism or Ethical Imperialism Paper Edited by Claude E. Welch, Jr. Belmont Ca. : Duxbury Press, 1971. Shaw, William H. and Barry, Vincent. Moral Issues in Business, 7th Ed. Belmont CA. : Wadsworth, 1998. Stone, Walter J. Republic at Risk. Belmont CA: Wadsworth, 1990 Throneberg, Cathy with Harder, Cliff. â€Å"Bribery: Coming to terms with a moral dilemma. † Evangelical Missions Quarterly. Vol. 35, No. 1 (January 1999): 35-37. Versi, Anver. On corruption and corrupters. † African Business, (November 1996): 7. Vogl, Frank. â€Å"The supply side of global bribery. † Finance Development, Vol. 35, No. 2 (June 1998): 30-33. (20) Ward, Peter M. , Editor. Corruption, Development and Inequality: Soft Touch or Hard Graft? New York: Routledge, 1989. Weber, James, and Getz, Kathleen. â€Å"Buy Bribes or Bye-Bye Bribes: The Future Status of Bribery in International Commerce. † Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol. 14, Issue 4 (2004): 695-711. Wertheime r, Alan. Coercion. Princeton University Press, 1987. Wilkens, Steve. Beyond Bumper Sticker Ethics. Downers Grove, Il: IVP, 1995. (21) APPENDIX Notes on the Literature The objectives of this paper have been to analyze the morality of bribery and corruption and to help the Christian professional acquire the beginnings of wisdom in dealing with the challenges of this difficult ethical issue. The author hopes that many professors will be able to use this paper to incorporate a module on bribery and corruption into courses in ethics, international business, business policy, etc. It is hoped that some will even be motivated to extend this research and that the extensive reference list will be helpful in this regard. John Noonan? s voluminous work, Bribes, is the definitive Judeo-Christian analysis of the topic, and is recommended as a primary reference. Bernard Adeney offers an alternative Christian viewpoint which is rooted in praxis, relies heavily on the analytical frameworks of moral philosophy as opposed to Noonan? s more theological treatment, and reaches more relativistic and less deontological conclusions. DeGeorge and Donaldson are the two secular ethicists who have reflected most extensively on this topic in the international business context. Paolo Mauro? seminal research on the relationship between economic development and corruption in the mid 1990? s influenced the World Bank and IMF to become activists in the fight against corruption, and undoubtedly gave impetus to the increasing activism of the OECD. Gray and Kaufmann of the World Bank provide a helpful overview of the economic costs of corruption and its impact on economic development in their 1998 paper. The Weber and Getz pap er in Business Ethics Quarterly in late 2004 gives the best current review of the academic literature on bribery and of the status of the global efforts to curb bribery and corruption. One will quickly discover that the literature on the micro level (that is, directed at personal and organizational decision makers) tends to delineate the extent of bribery and analyze its morality rather than to offer any practical suggestions to the ethical individual or firm for coping with the reality of corruption in a fallen world. The works of Gesteland and DeGeorge cited in this paper are the rare exceptions that offer extremely helpful coping mechanisms illustrated by numerous cases. The academic literature, as elaborated below, focuses its attention on the macro policy initiatives which can be taken by governments and international trade and financial organizations. These macro considerations don? t offer much help to the company negotiating a transnational contract or to the mission organization seeking visas or government permits. For the most part I have observed that Christian organizations maintain a deafening silence on this topic even though international missions and humanitarian aid professionals obviously encounter excruciating pressures to bribe or submit to extortion as they pursue their missions. In this light Evangelical Missions Quarterly is to be commended for devoting its January 1999 issue to several provocative articles dealing with bribery. Those teaching classes in Auditing, Business Law, or Forensic Accounting and those concerned with compliance with current regulations regarding bribery will find two papers published in 2004 to be especially helpful. Johnstone, Brown and Wickizer provide a comprehensive review of the legislative response to bribery in the USA and UK including a fairly detailed description of applicable regulatory provisions. Herz and Larson explore the accounting and internal control (22) requirements of the FCPA for companies and discuss tools that internal auditors can use to assess and deal with the risk that illegal payments will be made by their organizations in connection with international activities. They advocate the use of the Bribe Payers Index (BPI) published by Transparency International. Finally, in view of the restricted focus of this paper as outlined above, let me point out that my references do not attempt to survey the extensive literature on bribery dealing with structural and cultural elements of causation on both the supply and demand sides of corruption nor the public policy initiatives which might help ameliorate the problem. The 2004 paper of Sanyal and Samanta would provide a sample of this class of literature and its list of references would provide a helpful starting point for further research. They conclude: â€Å"There is a strong positive correlation between countries where bribes taking is highly prevalent and those countries that are most likely to offer bribes. The propensity to give bribes is determined by economic factors such as per capita income and degree of economic freedom in the country, cultural factors such as power distance and masculinity, and legal-regulatory factors such as accounting and tax treatment of bribes† (Abstract). â€Å"Countries with high scores on power distance, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance are perceived to be more corrupt† (11). The paper by Janos Bertok, a functionary of OECD, provides another example of this literature. He outlines OECD initiatives in the fight against corruption with some specificity and argues for structural reform. â€Å"In OECD work on public sector ethics, corruption is seen as more than individual criminal actions, but rather the result of systematic failure and a management problem. This is manifested by lowquality legislation and by weak public institutions that do not enforce laws, and even more, fail to provide adequate control, oversight, and transparency† (Abstract). 9/6/05 (23)