Ethics in Doing Global Business

So, too, do Americans fail to distinguish the differences in local ethics as they conduct their business affairs around the globe. As the world shrinks, with NAFTAs and GATTs providing the impetus, United States commercial concerns find it increasingly important to recognize the dividing line between "business as usual" and corruption in the home countries of their new trading partners. Nowhere does the issue come to the fore more than in the matter of gratuity; that is, Americans doing business abroad are being forced to ask the question: Where does local custom stop - and bribery begin?

It is not a question easily answered, particularly in the Latin American countries that share our hemisphere and some, but not all, of our European-based traditions. It is this similar-but-different aspect that makes it difficult for Norte Americanos doing business in Latin America to distinguish the grey line of difference between bribery and gratuity, cus

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United States and Latin America is concerned. In the United States, business ethics have always played a nebulous role in the public morality (Hass 40-41). Indeed, philosophically at least, there has been some question raised as to whether or not questions of "morality" should even be raised in the context of commerce, as indicated by this passage on the subject from Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman's influential book Capitalism and Freedom: It shows a fundamental misconception of the character and nature of a free economy. In such an economy, there is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition, without deception or fraud (Donaldson 68). Despite his apparent disdain for discussion of the topic, Friedman remains fairly much in the mainstream of American ethical standards by his deference to "free competition, without deception or fraud." Within that context, the Anglo-American tradition has developed a relatively strict understanding of why bribery is an undesirable element in the business and social equation: bribery - t
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Approximate Word count = 2345
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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