The term bribery sounds bad. How about kickbacks, tips, contingency fees, consultation fees, and so on? Terms vary, objectives to be accomplished by not-so-easy-to-define payments vary, and to whom such payments are made varies. Personal income levels vary from country to country, and thus the level of financial incentive provided by such payments varies. Also, as you learned from Chapter 4, cultural value systems vary; thus the degree of legalness, or social acceptability, varies for such payments. In general, “facilitating”

payments–legal or illegal aside–tend to be used more often in countries characterized by high levels of power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and collectivism than in other countries. As debated also in Global Perspective 5-6, could there be some things that are moral and ethical absolutes when it comes to payment of money to someone in the third party to influence and/or facilitate business transactions in your favor?

How about the U.S. standard, as stipulated in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977? The United States is a country characterized as having low levels of power distance and uncertainty avoidance and a high level of individualism—the opposite of those countries indicated above. Discuss how you would like to address this issue.