Business Ethics and Sustainability: The Link Between Ethics, Bribery and Corruption

This article discusses the link between ethics, bribery and corruption in the context of business sustainability. It explores the reasons why people engage in corruption and bribery, the impacts of these practices on society, and the contrast between bribery and corruption according to different ethical theories. The article also provides an overview of anti-bribery legislation in Australia and the United States.

Running head: BUSINESS ETHICS AND SUSTAINANILITY 1
Business ethics and Sustainability
Student’s name
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BUSINESS ETHICS AND SUSTAINABILITY 2
Business ethics and Sustainability
The link between ethics, bribery and corruption
The phrase “God made man, man made money and money made man mad” will help in
understanding bribery and corruption. The world has become tuned to the rhythms of money
resulting in many problems. Money has made it difficult for humans to trace their humanity
leading to the birth of bribery and corruption (Gorsira, Steg, Denkers & Huisman, 2018). People
are using their resources to get favors and climb the social ladder at the expense of other people
who are incapable of such resources. This means that, getting services is no longer based on
merits but the people you know.
Corruption and bribery are ethical problems that the society has to deal with at all times.
This is attributed to the fact that the participants in both bribery and corruption always want to
keep their actions secret. The people in charge of giving services are always responsible for
obeying and implanting the law, serving the concerns of the society and avoiding making
damage. Corruption and bribery are unethical and have numerous negative not only in the
society but also the business environment.
As an illustration, bribery and corruption can be seen in various field in our societies.
These include government institutions and private organizations. Getting first hand services will
depend on the amount of money one is willing to give. The birth of bribery and corruption in our
societies have led to increase greed and power struggle. Bribery can be defined as an unethical
practice where money or gift is offered in change for certain services or create influence. There
are two types of bribery; passive and active bribery. An example of active bribery can be given
by a person obtaining an inspection report without legal procedures or avoiding safety controls

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after paying an amount of money to the officials in charge of the operation (Xie, Qi, & Zhu,
2018). An example of a passive bribery can be given a security officer taking bribe from criminal
to rob the place. Corruption is the abuse of power for private gain.
Bribery, corruption and its link to ethics.
Ethics can be defined as a system of moral principles affecting the manner in which
people make decisions. Ethics considers the following; living a good life, understanding one’s
rights and responsibilities, knowing the language of right or wrong. Lastly, making a moral
decision when faced with a situation. The concepts of ethics have been derived from societal
values, religious beliefs, cultures and philosophies. Relationship existing between corruption,
bribery and ethics is that, corruptors are manipulating the moral codes set by the society for
personal gain.
Bribery and corruption are illegal and dishonest behaviors which are considered illegal
(Sikka & Lehman, 2015). Asking about the reasons why people practice corruption and bribery
may be considered naïve. The fact is, the main reason is due to personal gains and motivation.
Corruption and bribery may result in an organization due to the following factors; lack of
transparency, weak enforcement and policy implantations, insufficient opportunities and poverty.
In an organization where employees are not treated equally and avoided, they are likely to
engage in fraudulent activities to cover for the hard work that never get noticed by the
management.
Reasons why people take bribes or practice corruption
There are a number of reasons why people engage in corruption or accept bribes. First,
people get bribed or practice corruption due to need for speed where they want to be serviced

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faster than the rest. This may make organizations to deliberately slow down certain services.
Secondly, people engage in corruption and bribery due to convenience (Rose-Ackerman &
Palifka, 2016). This may result due to the fact that some people find it hard to go the offices and
follow protocols like other people. Fear is also a contributing factor. This arises from the fact that
people fear that without paying bribes they won’t be helped.
Ignorance and unwillingness to learn may make people practice bribery and corruption.
In most cases organizations and people engage in corruption and bribery to avoid business
losses. This may include bypassing certain protocols established as laws and regulation (Pardo,
2017). Take for instance, a business may pay bribes to avoid taxes with an objective of making
profits. Additionally, organizations may pay bribes when trying to bypass certain regulations
such as quality assurance for the product to reach the consumers.
Bribery and corruption using ethical relativism
Ethical relativism identifies that the absolute truth in ethics varies from society to society
and from person to person. According to David Hume, he believed that moral beliefs can be
determined by sentiment/emotions rather than reason. Herodotus, a Greek Historian argued that
every society has its own set of values which are considered best more than any other society.
When it comes to ethical relativism, there are no moral absolutes (Asongu, 2017). This means
that moral values of a society change over time. Corruption and bribery can’t be considered as
part of a nation’s culture. This is because both corruption and bribery will only favor the rich and
organizations with adequate resources. When corruption and bribery become part of a nation’s
culture, there are consequences that the people will be experiencing. The major impacts of
corruption and bribery in a country are; reduced quality in the services being offered to the
society (Remer, 2017).

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A place filled with corruption and bribery, people won’t be able to access quality
services. This means that for one to get an access to quality services, he or must pay or bribe
service providers. The areas that may be affected include electricity and distribution of resources.
Other areas that may be affected include education and healthcare delivery. In a country where
people have to pay to get quality services, the poor will continue being poor at the expense of the
rich people.
In a society where corruption and bribery are being practiced, there will be lack of a
proper justice system. In this scenario, rich people will be buying justice whereas poor people
will be facing the full force of the law. In the evident that evidence has been found, the police
department might interfere with the investigation process once they have been bribed by the
perpetrators of the crime. Additionally, in a weak justice system, judges and attorneys may be
bought at a price to rule in favor of the rich criminals at the expense of the poor defendant
(Ljungblom & Lennerfors, 2018). Thirdly, corruption and bribery may lead to reduced chances
of unemployment. This can be supported by the fact that government will be allocating resources
that may not be enough to provide employment for the people. Furthermore, in countries with
corruption and bribery, there will be poor hygiene and health resulting from poor infrastructural
developments.
The poor-quality services delivered at the expense of people lives will reduced the
general performance of the nation. Other impacts of corruption include increased pollution of the
environment (Ljungblom & Lennerfors, 2018). All these impacts of corruption and bribery, the
economic growth may be affected. The areas that will be affected include; reduction in FDI,
reduced infrastructural development, differences in trade ratio and reduction in the GDP growth.

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Contrast bribery and corruption according to different theories
Kant believed in theory of deontology. According to this theory consequences of an
action but the intentions matters. There are two claims when it comes to deontological theories.
They include; the core source of moral goodness is the will and a good will is based on universal
reasons (Gago-Rodríguez, Márquez-Illescas & Núñez-Nickel, 2018). According to this theory
actions haven’t been classified as either right or wrong. This makes to it difficult for one to
classify corruption and bribery as either a good or bad deed. From this theory, the consequences
of significant.
In understanding this theory, Kant came up with a list of categorical Imperatives which
act as a tap towards making decisions (Rose-Ackerman, 2018). Some of these categorical
imperatives include the universality principle. According to this principle, if an action is right for
others, then it will be right for us. From this, if a society sees corruption to be right then other
people will consider it to be right. This raises the question, is bribery and corruption morally
right or wrong? For a group of people, corruption and bribery may be right and for some it may
be wrong. Another categorical imperative is treatment of humans as an end not as a means.
Humans are rational beings and not nonliving things. According to this principle, treating human
being as a means towards getting to something is morally wrong.
Virtue ethics emphasizes on a person’s character to be an important element when
making decisions rather than the rules about the acts themselves (deontology) and consequences
(consequentialism). According to this theory, a character of a person will determine the nature of
decisions that he/she will be making when faced with a situation. This means that a person with
high integrity will always know that accepting bribes or being corrupt is against his character.
However, the only challenge when addressing virtue ethics is that there few people who will

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stick to their characters and avoid bribery or corruption (Sampath, & Rahman, 2018). From this
explanation, a project manager will either accept or deny a bribe based on his moral character.
Consequentialism argues that an action is considered right or wrong based on the
outcome. Meaning that when corruption yield good harvest then it should be considered a right
action and bad when it yields bad results. When a project manager engages in corruption or
accepts bribes, he will be putting his reputations and the company at risk. This may impact the
audience such as the stakeholders negatively (Brown & Loosemore, 2015). From this illustration,
all these theories have concluded that bribery is immoral.
Stopping corruption and bribery will involve the manager coming up with policies and
strategies restricting any of these practices within the organization. If any employee is found,
strict measures should be taken against him or her (Greenwood & Freeman, 2018). A policy that
may be implemented is no business involving the organization should be carried out outside the
organization. These business activities being done outside the premises of the organization may
likely to end up in taking bribery or corruption.
Secondly, stopping corruption and bribery will require paying employees and recognizing
their efforts through rewards without discriminating other workers. This will create a platform
where employees feel like they are a part of the company (Gago-Rodríguez, Márquez-Illescas &
Núñez-Nickel, 2018). The manager should come up with a smart technology within the
organization. These technologies may include closed circuit television networks where actions of
employees will be closely monitored. In any organization, the manger should be in apposition to
trail any money that is not paid according to the rules and regulations of the company.

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Monitoring the money will also prevent cases of employees altering records or deleting
some of the records that have been fed into the system of the organization. Most importantly, the
manager should know the type of employees he/she is working within the organization (Kang,
Long, Zhang & Hao, 2017). This involves any third party that is associated with the
organization. This will prevent cases of partnering with organization having cases of fraudulent
activities that may affect the corporate of your organization. As the manager.
Contrast on the Australian legislation
In Australia bribery of a foreign official is considered a criminal under section 70.2 the
Schedule to the Criminal Code (Redlich, 2018). The criminal offence has the following elements
which are; being offered a benefit, the benefit is not legitimate and influencing foreigner to
obtain a business within the country. The befit doesn’t need to be given directly but in form of
other favors (Greenwood & Freeman, 2018).In Australia the agencies in charge of monitoring
bribery and corruptions are Australian Federal Police and the Office of the Commonwealth
Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) (O’Connell, 2015).Other agencies include Australian
Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission,
the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security and the Office of the Commonwealth
Ombudsman.
In the United States of America, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977 was
enforcement as a policy that would fight corruption and bribery of foreigners (Business Anti-
Corruption, n.d). In this legislation, a person or organization can be held responsible for
corporate liability, responsibility for third parties and extraterritoriality for corruption offences.
There are three categories of anti-bribery provisions in this legislation. They include; issuer,
domestic concern and organizations/person under territorial jurisdiction.

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Conclusion
In conclusion, according to the ethical theories, bribery and corruption are highly
unethical. This is because they go against the values and cultures of a society. With corruption
and bribery, the rich will be benefiting at the expense of the poor. This can be explained by most
African countries such as Kenya where corruption has been a menace since her independence.
Leaders are making policies to favor them at the expense of the poor. From tis illustration, the
government and organizations should come up with policies refuting bribery and corruption.

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