Ethical Challenges Faced By Ibm

The corporate world has an unfavorable view of itself by being selfish, evil, and against the average American. Companies market themselves and their products in certain ways that makes them and their products appealing to everyone and if not everyone then a certain group of people. Every company has a mission to follow and values to go by, but some companies lack ethics and morals. In this paper I am going to talk about one company that engages in ethical behavior and another that doesn’t.

IBM was behind the inventions of the Automated Teller Machine (ATM); Floppy Disk; Electronic Keypunch; SABRE travel reservation system; PC; UPC codes; Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM);Watson Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Machine. (IBM Facebook, 2014)

With the globalization in world budget, business ethics became essential necessity for companies. Business to business ethics of applicable behaviors in the long-term achievement of businesses in a positive direction, otherwise it has been the supremacy to adversely affect the behavior. As a result, the breakdown of ethical scandals has emerged released in the United States of America and Europe. Business, which

 In regard to corruption and bribery by U.S. companies and their agents conducting business overseas, the State Department claims that the U.S. “has been a leader in the multinational effort to end bribery and corruption in international practices, a campaign... supported by the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and other multilateral organizations and institutions” (U.S. Dept. of State). This statement clearly demonstrates that the need to address and deter corruption and bribery in the international business environment is recognized as an important initiative, worth pursuing and requiring the cooperation of many nations. Even though it took the U.S. nearly ten years to bring thirty-three countries on board to take part in a multinational anti-bribery initiative, they did so by signing the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions (US Dept. of Justice, Lay-Person’s Guide).

In performing their job responsibilities, AlphaTech employees ought to dependably act legally, morally, and to the best interest of AlphaTech. This Code of Business Conduct and Ethics establishes the guidelines that administer the way we treat each other, our clients, shareholders, governments, competitors, the media and the general public. Employees who are not sure whether their behavior or the behavior of their coworkers conforms to the Code of Conduct ought to contact their administrator or the Legal Department. Employees might likewise report any suspected insubordination as provided in the Legal Department's reporting rules below.

Bribery has become a common term in the corporate world, specifically when international business deals are discussed. Until 1977, it was legal in the United States to bribe foreign officials in order to receive preference or a better business deal. But, the passing of the Foreign Corruption Practices Act of 1977 and its subsequent amendments made it a criminal act for any organization within the U.S. or foreign organization doing business in the United States, to practice any form of bribery and also required the President of the United States to engage other nations in creating similar laws. Since, many nations have chosen to band together against bribery and have formed the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that ultimately created the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions. This now makes it illegal to practice bribery in any of the countries that are part of this organization. While the United States and the world has come a long way in stamping out bribery, there are still some organizations that think they can get away with it but end up with massive fines and prison time. But, with so many nations banding together, one can still be hopeful for a world in which we can do business ethically with other ethical businesses around the world.

This presentation is on the organization integrity and social responsibilities. As the leaders of the company, if we “act unethically and/or without integrity” (Ross, 2009, para 1), our employees will lose confidence and trust in our organization, however, if our employees do the same than our customers will “lose confidence and trust in our products and services” (Ross, 2009, para 1). For example, Intel had issues with its Pentium chip. They used unethical practices, which consisted of a five-point plan. This presentation will discuss the following:

One of IBM's ethical problems was bribing government officials in a foreign country. This business was investigated over allegations made by South Korean and Chinese government officials, who received about two hundred thousand and seven hundred dollars in bribes from 1998 to 2003. In return, the Chinese and South Koreans gave contracts for computer gear to IBM. All though IBM did not admit to the allegations they paid the ten million dollar penalty that was set in the lawsuit. By bribing those officials IBM violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977.

IBM was founded in 1911. IBM (International Business Machines) is by far the world's largest information technology company in terms of revenue ($88 billion in 2000) and by most other measures, a position it has held for about the past 50 years. IBM products include hardware and software for a line of business servers, storage products, custom-designed microchips, and application software. ("What is IBM (International Business Machines)? - Definition from WhatIs.com," n.d.)

Within a competitive world, companies should become ethical throughout many perspectives. Ethics refers to the standards of right and wrong in an attempt to influence behaviour. (Kinicki 2015, p.83) In stating this, companies can be ethical within numerous occasions such as ethics and financial performance, ethical performance, ethics and sustainability and ethical competition such as competitive advantage. Despite the positive side, there are also some negative implications towards ethics.

Mr. Chong knows about recent cases of corporate bribery in Malaysia and in the retail industry. There had been scandals regarding foreign investors who bribed public officials or financed government programs to obtain business privileges or competitive advantage (Inkpen, 2010). Moreover, there was a recent case of bribery involving a Jextra’s country manager in the Philippines. More likely, this manager also encountered similar ethical dilemmas like Mr. Chong. Some individual factors that may have driven him to act unethically in the Philippines could have been pressure from the company to expand and gain competitive advantage in the region. Alternatively, he might have simply wanted to advance his career as a country manager, lacked of ethics or did not know the local laws regarding bribery. Additionally, he might not have received or requested support from the top management regarding the social and ethical issues raised in the Philippines. Mr. Chong, as an experienced manager, should have anticipated that he would encounter legal and ethical risks in Malaysia.

The issue of business relations with government has increasingly become a key issue of business ethics. Some of the many questions raised are

Many ethical issues have been surfacing in the last decade due to the hand in hand prosper of international business globalization. The ethical concerns include corruption, bribery, human rights issues among many others. Business ethics is a form of professional ethics or applied ethics that examines moral or ethical problems that arise in a business enviroment. It involves the application of moral behavior to business situations (Adeyeye, 2012 p 22). Bribery is the offering, receiving, soliciting, and giving of something of value in order to influence an action of an official or company in offering of legal or public duties. A bribe is a gift that is bestowed in order to influence the recipients conduct and the extent of the influence

Important Note: This sample essay mainly illustrates the structure of your assignment on ethical issues of a company selected by you. You may first identify two or three ethical problems and then discuss how to solve them. Remember including relevant citations to support your evidences and viewpoints.

This does not set a good example for the employees and can be harmful to the future of the company. Ensuring that bribery stops can solve many of the problems discussed above. Some feasible solutions are being recommended to help the company in both short term and long term. First of all, all employees including managers should be given training and education about bribery, corruption and what’s deemed illegal according to the law. Explicit measures should be suggested on how they can avoid supporting corruption and also where they can report to in case a situation where dishonesty is involved arises.