Unethical practices in developing countries
This report aims to shed light on the ethical issues, which arise within a business firm and further it will discuss ethical theories in order to mitigate those unethical practices. The primary purpose of any business organisation is to make profit. They hardly think of society or environment while operating business. Besides, as companies are going global as the time progresses, the opportunity of making profit is increasing with that as well. Occasionally, managers and higher authority practice discrepancy within the system to make more money. It is indeed an exploitation of customers’ right. It has been observed that while working in a developing country, managers engage themselves in practices of corruption and bribery to secure contracts or to ensure business transactions within stipulated time (Sebastiani, Montagnini & Dalli, 2013). The argument has been raised that the situation is worse in developing countries than that of developed countries across the world. Therefore, the agenda of this report is to examine ethical issues in business practiced by foreign officials in developing country along with that it will recommend strategies to omit those from the system with the help of ethical business concept and theories (Lucas, Van Wee & Maat, 2016).
It has been observed that behind the promises of delivering authentic products in affordable prices, there is a series of prior activities, which are not exposed to the customers. Every single business firm is driven by the motto of making profit under any circumstance in this competitive and dynamic environment (Edwards & Kirkham, 2014). Managers engaged themselves into unethical practices while operating business and occasionally, they successfully do that without affecting company’s reputation. The system of developing countries is more corrupted and even foreign officials engage themselves into unethical transactions via online mode as well while working in a country like that (Mason, 2017). However, working in a corrupted environment cannot be accepted from the perspective of a social being. Hence, there is nothing easier than being truthful to the customers. However, previous studies on ethical issues have mentioned exact problems through which business firms are going, yet the solutions have not yet applied or adopted by the firms properly.
There is an intense relationship between ethics and corporate social responsibility (Cheng, Ioannou & Serafeim, 2014). The set of fundamental principles is what makes business operations ethical and socially responsible as well. While operating a business or country, the authority should possess a certain philosophy. According to the nature of dealings, every organisation has a part to play in terms of protecting moral values of the society. That is what makes a business sustainable. Countries need to be ethical to grow a sustainable economy. This report will be a guideline to those companies and nations, suffering from ethics related problems mainly in developing countries like India, Bangladesh, and Nigeria on application of ethical theories and concept to mitigate ongoing issues.
Ethical theories and business sustainability
There are moral and legal restrictions on the organisations to comply with the governmental norms of environment. Violating those norms are considered as unethical practices and creates a bad impact on good will of the concerned organisation. On the contrary, it has been observed occasionally even Government officials are corrupt (Slade & Prinsloo, 2013). Hence, it becomes the practice of the entire nation, which is shameful enough.
While dealing with issues, it is important to have knowledge about ethical and moral guidelines. This knowledge will help the managers in order to understand business sustainability deeply. According to the current regulations of firms, customer satisfaction is the ultimate strategy. However, if any practice harms customers’ interest that will be considered as immoral. On the other hand, ethics can be considered as a form of maintaining good behaviour. Whereas, morality is judgemental as it discusses rules and restrictions, ethics refers to a continuous process of development by introducing the concept of ideal organizational value (Cameron, Payne & Doris, 2013). There is difference between right or wrong and legal or illegal practices. In this case, practices are determined to be legal or illegal according to the legal code of the country. Although, every country has moral code of conduct still due to systematic errors in the process it takes longer time to accomplish business purpose if foreign officials are working in a developing country(Lestrange & Tolstikov-Mast, 2013). They do not find any other way except offering bribe to be successful in their objectives.
In general, corruption refers to unlawful exploitation of the consumers’ interest for the firms’ benefit. It has been performed maintaining high secrecy as it is both unethical and illegal. The intensity of corruption depends, on which level it has been performed. Such as, if it is happening due to any gap in the structure of organizational process it can be mitigated within companies acknowledging it as a ‘systematic corruption’. There is a tendency among business firms of violating government norms to a considerable extent to make more profit. Corruption has been existing in the society like this way, since the concept of ‘business’ was introduced. However, the continuous practice of corruption has long-term impact on the society and environment. When corruption occurs in the highest level of governing bodies involving financial and legal violation behind the political power, then the intensity is considered as grand.
As descripted in Rhodes, (2016), the emission scandal of Volkswagen is an instance of deliberate systematic corruption. The CEO of the company decided to draw high turnover within a short period. The car was diesel based and due to some communicational gap within the system, manufacturer team intentionally installed a faulty software, which influenced higher amount of carbon emission. However, the company promised the customers to deliver an environment friendly car. When the case was investigated by the Environment Protection Agency, it considered to be as global issue of corruption.
Moral and legal restrictions on organizations
Practice of bribery refers to offering or receiving cash or kind in return of altering any important decision. It is difficult for the ordinary people to assume how huge the exchanged amount can be in the cases of bribery. Generally, the money is offered to a person holding a public or legal designation to sanction or alter decisions in return of valuable gifts or large amount of money (Zhou, Han & Wang, 2013). It is against the law to practice bribery, which is influencing someone’s verdict with valuable gifts or money. Although, the constitution considered it as criminal offence the practice is present within the society and system of business organisations. There are certain reasons why business firms opt for bribery to get their job done.
- It is difficult to deliver a consistent amount of profit under dynamic environment. Higher management board or company shareholders even after realising the fact at times push the capability of the workforce. Therefore, occasionally, pressure of performance influence the managers to offer bribe.
- Government’s rules at times restrict certain operations of business. The intention of the enterprises is always to make monetary profit, satisfy the customers and save the additional amount of earnings by paying less tax than the allotted amount. In order to do that they practice bribery.
- At intervals, it takes a long time to receive the certificate of assurance from the Government. Therefore, firms find it expensive and an obstacle in front of their dealings. As a result, they want to solve these cases by offering bribe to the Government officials.
- Even after delivering best quality products to the consumers maintaining regulation, competitors win the race by practicing bribery, which is highly unethical and acknowledged as criminal offence.
Corruption, in developing country like Nigeria, is rooted within the national ethical policies, society, personal and professional life of the citizen. It has been practiced and considered as a part of culture, not only that it has been institutionalized as of now. No sign of remarkable protest has not yet been developed strongly except small isolated movements and eventually the practice has become a tradition. Not only Nigerian economy has been suffering for this ongoing unethicality but also Nigerians need to revise their cultural value. It is regarded as most populous country of Africa and one of the largest oil producers (Ehiemua, 2015). As the chances of growing other industries are low due to lack of resources, the country is mostly dependent on oil production and trying to solve the issues of unemployment. However, corrupted government officials and exploitation of national funds are considered major reasons behind the country’s economic demotion.
Consequentialism
According to the concept of consequentialism, an action can be considered as good or bad based on the result it delivers. Actions are good until it is promoting happiness to the greatest amount of people. Actions are not evaluated in the parameter of morality yet the consequences are judged in terms of ethics. As an example, suppose a woman kills or harm someone in a situation of violation, although murdering someone is an immoral thing to do as she is doing to help herself moral and legal codes will not consider this as immoral as this case will be judged based on its consequences.
Deontology
It is considered as opposite theory of consequentialism at times as proposed by Immanuel Kant. Whereas, the former theory deals with the nature of consequences, deontology evaluates the actions itself without considering the outcome. For instance, murdering any living being is considered as immoral no matter what, how bad an individual is. Theoretically, Kant describes, good consequences can come only by following good principles.
Corruption and bribery practices
Virtue ethics
Virtue ethics is considered as ‘normative ethical’ theories which concentrates on individual’s mind and character. It can be termed as trained nature of living being, influence by culture of family, locality or country. Eventually, every living being behave according to that. It is their moral or immoral sense, which determines their ethical behaviour.
A detail reading of Chakrabarty and Bass, (2015) suggests, as far as corruption and bribery is concerned, no good consequences can come from these practices. These are highly unethical whether practiced by a country or business firm, it depends on individual virtue mostly (Crossan, Mazutis & Seijts, 2013). Managers in a corporate scenario, can justify their unethical practices as it is beneficial for the company and generate happiness. Yet, happiness for greater population is not approved here. Therefore, it cannot be considered ethical in terms of consequentialism. Either deontology distinctly denies to approve this one as actions itself are not moral. Managers, practicing corruption is the evidence of their ill nature of virtue.
In the year of 1999, Australia took some serious steps against the practice of bribery of public officials working in an international scenario (Kolk, 2016). In order to mitigate the issue Australia had adopted and amended previous anti-bribery convention within their legislation as it was considered of low intensity by organisation for economic co-operation and development (Spahn, 2013). On the contrary, as discussed before in Nigeria the corrupted officials are so into the unethical practices that it has become a culture of the country (Riivari & Lämsä, 2014). Recently, Nigeria has started to initiate anti-corruption laws yet they have to draw a long-term burden of economic demotion with them.
Conclusion
The discussion on the unethical and immoral practices exposes that it has been existing within the society and business firms since the term business has invented. The primary focus of any business is to make more profit with the progression of time. Managers and entrepreneurs only count their organizational goal, as they have to confront with strong competitors in this dynamic environment of business. As a result, their focus on sustainable business practice acknowledging the social and environmental interest becomes secondary matter. On the other hand, behind corrupted activities of government official are cases of disturbed individual virtue. However, after a detail investigation on corruption, bribery and unethical practices it has been observed that if these issues are not dealt with concrete remedies, organizations and developing countries will fail to attain a sustainable future. Therefore, conclusion can be drawn stating that awareness among the professionals working both in private and governmental orientation must possess individual ethics, which will restrict them from taking immoral and illegal decisions. Laws has been framed against this yet it will not protect consumers’ interest unless it has been practiced by the citizens. Hence, it is entirely up to every social being whether they want a bright sustainable future of their organisation as well as country or not, the protection of law along with interest of society and environment depend on this healthy mentality.
References
Cameron, C. D., Payne, B. K., & Doris, J. M. (2013). Morality in high definition: Emotion differentiation calibrates the influence of incidental disgust on moral judgments. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(4), 719-725.
Chakrabarty, S., & Bass, A. E. (2015). Comparing virtue, consequentialist, and deontological ethics-based corporate social responsibility: Mitigating microfinance risk in institutional voids. Journal of Business Ethics, 126(3), 487-512.
Cheng, B., Ioannou, I., & Serafeim, G. (2014). Corporate social responsibility and access to finance. Strategic management journal, 35(1), 1-23.
Crossan, M., Mazutis, D., & Seijts, G. (2013). In search of virtue: The role of virtues, values and character strengths in ethical decision making. Journal of Business Ethics, 113(4), 567-581.
Edwards, M. G., & Kirkham, N. (2014). Situating ‘giving voice to values’: A metatheoretical evaluation of a new approach to business ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 121(3), 477-495.
Ehiemua, S. (2015). NIGERIA CRUDE OIL: SOURCES OF CORRUPTION AND ECONOMIC DISPARITY IN THE NATION. European Journal of Research in Social Sciences Vol, 3(4).
Kolk, A. (2016). The social responsibility of international business: From ethics and the environment to CSR and sustainable development. Journal of World Business, 51(1), 23-34.
Lestrange, J. J., & Tolstikov-Mast, Y. (2013). Can Global Organizations Use Values-Based Leadership to Combat Bribery and Corruption?. Journal of leadership, accountability and ethics, 10(4), 41-56.
Lucas, K., Van Wee, B., & Maat, K. (2016). A method to evaluate equitable accessibility: combining ethical theories and accessibility-based approaches. Transportation, 43(3), 473-490.
Mason, R. O. (2017). Four ethical issues of the information age. In Computer Ethics (pp. 41-48). Routledge.
Rhodes, C. (2016). Democratic business ethics: Volkswagen’s emissions scandal and the disruption of corporate sovereignty. Organization Studies, 37(10), 1501-1518.
Riivari, E., & Lämsä, A. M. (2014). Does it pay to be ethical? Examining the relationship between organisations’ ethical culture and innovativeness. Journal of Business Ethics, 124(1), 1-17.
Sebastiani, R., Montagnini, F., & Dalli, D. (2013). Ethical consumption and new business models in the food industry. Evidence from the Eataly case. Journal of business ethics, 114(3), 473-488.
Slade, S., & Prinsloo, P. (2013). Learning analytics: Ethical issues and dilemmas. American Behavioral Scientist, 57(10), 1510-1529.
Spahn, E. K. (2013). Implementing global anti-bribery norms: from the foreign corrupt practices act to the OECD anti-bribery convention to the UN convention against corruption. Ind. Int’l & Comp. L. Rev., 23, 1.
Zhou, X., Han, Y., & Wang, R. (2013). An empirical investigation on firms’ proactive and passive motivation for bribery in China. Journal of Business Ethics, 118(3), 461-472.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
