When examining the US and the Middle East one thing is certain-in both countries corruption, business and ethics exist. The hard part is reducing the amount of corruption and raising the level of ethics on behalf of governments, corporations and employees. While the United States has a much more developed sense of ethics and corporate values than does the Middle East, one sees that examples like Exxon, Dow Corning and the Tobacco industry proves there is still a lot to be developed from an ethical standpoint in both countries. This comparison analysis will focus on ethics and corruption in business between the US and the Middle East. The comparison will also include some emphasis on the government in each country. The more economically developed and sophisticated American infrastructure has obviously allowed for greater development of ethics in the public and private sector-and because of the nature of how the media and the public have been putting increasing pressure on corporations and the government to exhibit a higher standard of ethics. The Middle East stands in stark contrast as a perceived hot bed of corruption. Neither Arabic nor the Hebrew language have a term for the concept of business ethics and the private sector and the academic world have no formal ethics initiatives. This comparison will highlight the level of corruption and the attempts towards ethics of both countries.
In the United States corporate responsibility is becoming more of a reality in the late 1990s than it has been the entire century. Because of increasing public exposure, many corporations that have acted unethically since the 1980s have paid heavily for it in the form of government fines, victim lawsuits, increased federal regulation and loss of consumer trust. In corporate America the last ten years has seen a turn-a-round from the old lawyer-driven forms of corporate non-compliance and unethical behavior to one that now tries to instill...