You have been assigned as the project manager or a new bridge that your company hopes to build in a oreign city. You visit that city with your company’s vice president o international operations, scouting the site or the bridge and meeting with city offi cials in preparation or making a bid on the project. In a private meeting with the minister o public projects, the vice president pulls out a platinum wristwatch in a box rom iffany’s and gives it to the minister. “Tis is or you rom the president o my company!” announces the vice president.

Te minister seems quite pleased with the expensive gif and assures the vice president that the bid rom your company would be “positively winning” or something to that effect. You can’t swear to it because the minister’s English is

rail, but it does seem that your company was being promised the bridge project.

You know that your company has a poticy barring gifs to oreign offi ciats, but you don’t know that it necessarity appties in this case. In the taxi on the way to the buitding site, you ask the vice president about the gif. He advises you that poticies are “nice words” but that “this is how we have to do business here”
and mentions that the minister and the president o the company are personat riends. You smite and change the subject o conversation, but you are stitt worried that the gif giving was unethicat and might atso be ittegat.
Managing this project woutd give a reat boost to your career. It coutd tead to more internationat opportunities and higher visibitity in your proession as wett as executive positions at your company and possibty job offers rom prestigious competitors. It coutd atso terminate your career i it were determined that you were invotved in bribing a oreign offi ciat.
What shoutd be your next steps in addressing this ditemma? What sources o inormation coutd you consutt—about appticabte taws, about ethics, about intercutturat communication? Who coutd you tatk to? What documents or messages, i any, shoutd you write?