Business Ethics Now 3rd Edition by Andrew Ghillyer

Exercise 14

Budgeting for bribes.
You are a midlevel manager for the government of a small African nation that relies heavily on oil revenues to run the country's budget. The recent increase in the price of oil has improved your country's budget significantly, and, as a result, many new infrastructure projects are being funded with those oil dollars- roads, bridges, schools, and hospitals-which are generating lots of construction projects and very lucrative orders for materials and equipment. However, very little of this new wealth has made its way down to the lower levels of your administration. Historically, your government has always budgeted for very low salaries for government workers in recognition of the fact that their paychecks are often supplemented by payments to expedite the processing of applications and licensing paperwork. Your boss feels strongly that there is no need to raise the salaries of the lower-level government workers since the increase in infrastructure contracts will bring a corresponding increase in payments to those workers and, as he pointed out, "companies that want our business will be happy to make those payments." Divide into two groups, and argue for and against the continuation of this arrangement.