Good Bribery In The Public And International Business Essay Example

Bribery is the crime of giving gifts or money in order to alter the behaviour of the recipient in one’s favour. Bribery constitutes soliciting of any other valuable item to influence the actions of a person in a position of authority from doing their legal or public duty. The gift bestowed to influence the recipient’s conduct is in actualisation the bribe. In bureaucracy, bribery is a reason for the high cost of production of services and goods.
International bribery inhibits development of the economy, undermines market efficiency and predictability, and causes destruction of incentives to compete on price and quality. As a result, many people are denied the right to minimal standards of living. Bribery brings about the creation of non-tariff barriers in foreign trade, which in return causes economic deadweight loss (Guvenli et al. 333). These losses reduce the long-term competitiveness of nations as well as firms in the market. The respect of the rule of law and the holistic structure of the society is marred as a corrosive and sinister effect of bribery.
Bribery is a factor perpetuating poverty. The poor and disadvantaged are forced to make impossible choices that verge basic of needs and necessities. Poor people have minimal access to education thus making them vulnerable to exploitation and exclusion from services. Lack of knowledge about their rights makes marginalisation and social exclusion easier (Birhanu et al. 212). Access to essential social services and resources strained due to failure of the social compact between the government and the people. For this reason, the poor compromise their social and human rights and the quality of their livelihood.
For many businesses worldwide, bribes present a real cost. More than one in four businesspeople in a group of countries that took part in a survey about bribery attest that they lose business due to bribery annually. Companies bribe to speed up bureaucracy, win contracts, and avoid or change rules in the form of discrete indirect financial contributions intended to influence policy makers and procurement.

Works Cited

Birhanu, Addis, Alfonso Gambardella, and Giovanni Valentini. "Bribery and its Firm-Level Outcomes in Africa and Latin America." Academy of Management Proceedings. Vol. 2013. No. 1. Academy of Management, 2013.
Guvenli, Turgut, and Rajib Sanyal. "Perception and understanding of bribery in international business." Ethics & Behavior 22.5 (2012): 333-348.