Bribery in Negotiation

       Nowadays people are talking more and more about the ethics in negotiation. Here we want to share with the reades our opinion on one of the unethical activities in negotiation, that is, the bribery. First of all, we would like to put forward some definitions on the key words.

Ethic: A set of principles or a system of moral values. Eg: being honest; being equitable to others, etc.

Negotiation: The process of two or more parties working together to arrive at a mutually acceptable agreement on one or more issues.

Then our discussion will focus on the bribery in negotiation. We will put forward an example as well as the influence of this phenomenon in the following part.

Bribery has become one of the common unethical phenomena in business negotiations, especially when the business practices are extremely difficult to be achieved under tough competition.

For instance, in this picture, the big trolley represents a purchasing department manager of a big business company. Those small trolleys represent different suppliers who wish to cooperate with the big company. Because of the strict requests put forward by the big company( the sharp teeth), lots of the small companies are refused and therefore lose the contract in the negotiation. But as we can see, only one ordinary supplier becomes the lucky guy who finally wins the contract in a special unconspicuous way –offering the bribe. It is a true case happened in BMW company in Germany. The wife of the BMW's purchasing department manager received 100,000 USD as a consultion fee from a supplier who wanted to do business with the company. Then she provided the briber with a large amount of information which was supposed to be the business secret of the company. That helped the briber succeed in the negotiation and become BMW's business partner at last. Of course, when this case was explored by the public, the purchasing manager was fired immediately. As for the BMW company, it had suffered a lot in rebuilding its image.

After analyzing with examples, we feel that bribery is a totally unethical phenomenon in business negotiations, as it affects the company and the individuls in the following aspect:

1.       bringing bad reputation;

2.       making people feel that taking bribes in business negotiation is granted;

3.       ruining the credit of the company and the individuls;

4.       disturbing the order of the market;

5.       seizing chances from smaal companies in rough competition.

There are of course other negative effects of bribery in business negotiations. This problem has already raised so much attention and discussion throughout the business field. As future managers, we hope that after reading this blog all of us can think more deeply about the problem. Never take bribery into consideration when doing business. Be ethical to our partners. Be ethical to ourselves.