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| The government of a developing country invited several companies to bid on a project to enhance its telecommunications infrastructure. Robert James is Vice President of Global Sales for SouthComm, a large telecommunications company based in the U.S. Mr. James obtained all of the details required to bid on the project and was able to submit the bid before the deadline. A few weeks after the deadline had passed, he telephoned the deputy minister of the country to find out the status of the project. During that conversation, the deputy minister invited Mr. James to a special meeting to present SouthComm’s proposal in detail. Mr. James spent several days preparing for the meeting and then traveled to the country for the meeting. During the meeting, Mr. James presented the details of SouthComm’s proposal for over an hour to the deputy minister and vice deputy. He then answered questions from the men for about twenty minutes. When there were no more questions, Mr. James told the deputy and vice deputy that SouthComm was extremely interested in winning the bid for the project and asked if there was anything else he could do to convince them that SouthComm was the best company to select to do the project. The deputy and vice deputy then spoke amongst themselves in their native language for several minutes. Finally, the vice deputy told Mr. James that SouthComm’s bid would be guaranteed to win if a commission of $1 million were paid to the country’s government. Mr. James knew that this “commission” request was nothing more than a bribe, and explained that such a payment would be against U.S. laws as well as SouthComm’s corporate policy. The vice deputy then stood up, said goodbye and shook Mr. James’ hand. Questions A. Why would SouthComm have a corporate policy against these types of payments? B. Mr. James later shared this experience with Rita Lane, who holds a similar position with a large U.S. multinational company. Ms. Lane said that such requests are “commonplace” in global business and that she would do it as long as that practice is acceptable in the foreign country. Do you agree with Ms. Lane’s opinion? |