One of my bosses who I worked for brought me along to an informal negotiating event where we met with a representative from the potential client firm. The first thing my boss does after grabbing coffee and sitting down was to pull out a thin white envelope and slipping it past the table. The scene looked right out of a movie. The representative looked taken aback after he was asked to open the envelope and I saw through the thin paper that there were a couple stacks of cash. The talk then proceeded as planned with the usual sharing of company facts and potential partnership strategies. I knew my boss had a personal stake in the negotiation as the success of the project would directly impact his year end bonus which therefore explains his action. What was more surprising was how the representative did not offer any sign of acknowledgement and instead just quietly slipped the envelope into his bag. It looked like a practiced reaction which tells me that underhanded dealings in business negotiations might not be as rare as I had thought. I found out later during the end of my internship that the deal that they were negotiating did indeed go through which was not nearly as surprising.
To side track from personal experiences, I thought about opportunistic behavior while watching the GOP debate this week as well. I wonder just how many of these politicians are simply sweet talking to win votes and conversely how many actually hold true to their word. Take Carly Fiorina for example. Her strong foreign policy stance when she vowed to cut Vladimir Putin off and refuse to engage in bilateral talks surely appeals to an eager nationalistic voter's ears. But given Russia's scale, global presence and Cold War history, just how much of that does she mean and more importantly, to what extent can she achieve such a promise?
That is a pretty juicy story. I don't recall a student previously writing about witnessing and apparent bribe like that. So I think you for the illustration. I do plan to talk about things with more shades of gray than that. For example, if you teach a large class on campus, the representative from the textbook publisher might by you a nice meal or give you some other perq (e.g., tickets to a Cubs game). The meal itself can perhaps be rationalized as something to accompany a conversation, one that the rep wants to have but that the professor wouldn't otherwise be inclined to participate in. Textbook adoptions are driven by a bunch of factors, not just the quality of the written text. So it is reasonable for the rep to learn what factors are of interest to the instructor.
ReplyDeleteI have watched none of the debates and have gotten something of an allergic reaction to reading opinion pieces about this particular campaign. So I won't comment on what any particular candidate says. But it is worth noting that the press (particularly on TV) acts opportunistically about the news, since they want to draw eyeballs to their shows. This impacts coverage, which in turn impacts what the candidates say.
I feel like what's even more surprising is that this was at a very large company with very strict compliance rules. I had to take a 4 hour compliance module prior to beginning the internship. I was absolutely not ready to witness such an overt bribery attempt. But at the same time, I must say that I was not repulsed by the behavior and was instead more interested in finding out whether these bribery attempts had it's own code of conduct or whether it simply depended on the actors involved. I had heard from my parents who both have work experience that the financial sector is ruthless and many people bypass the law for their own gain. This really ties into the question and mentality of if everyone else is doing it, then should I do it too or risk falling behind? A lesson that I've heard a fair amount of times is that morals are important, but morals don't put food on the table.
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