Salt Lake City and the Olympics Bribery Scandal
Having a long history dating back to 1896, the Olympics established an image of honor and sportsmanship in the minds of its stakeholders, including its supporters, sponsors, employees, athletes, and the people that wait to watch its events impatiently. Therefore, the Olympics organization has a duty to everyone that strives to make its events memorable to act in a trustworthy, honest, and ethical manner, so that it wouldn't allow anything to shake its great foundation. But since ethics is a broad word that people use to define what is right and what is wrong, it is necessary to note that ethical ideas vary from one country to another, one organization to another, one person to another, and most importantly, from one society to another. Yet, and according to our book, Business and Society, "Ethics is a universal human trait found everywhere" (Post, Lawrence, Weber, 2002, p. 103), or as I think, it should be. The reason that different people have different ethical standards is attributed to the fact that they come from different cultures. To emphasize on this point, our book suggests that ethical problems occur in business for several reasons, one of them being "cross-cultural contradictions". This means that, when corporations do
In order to make the ethical rules effective and prevent the same mistakes in the future, the IOC members as well as the members of the bid cities must have a handbook that contains a clearly defined code of ethics that would provide guidance to them when encountering an ethical dilemma. Because of him, the Olympics became more profitable for the cities that host them as he transformed it from a sporting event to a multimillion dollar business, which may have motivated the SLOC members to bribe in order to make profits. The ad hoc commission blamed the cities for that, as according to the IOC, it's discourteous to refuse the gift or ask its donor about its price; it might insult him/her. As the book suggests, "His lifestyle may have set a poor example for the other members of the IOC" (Post et al, 2002, p. The Hodler guidelines though didn't prohibit members from traveling at first-class planes, staying in five-star hotels, or dining in expensive restaurants. I think that Salt Lake City's failure in 1998 to host the Olympics, because Nagano was a better gift-giver, motivated it to pay as much as it could to ensure its position in year 2002. Although Marc Hodler, a Swiss IOC member, put some guidelines that should be followed by the IOC members, the guidelines were not specific enough to "guide" neither the members nor the bid cities to the correct path when faced with awkward situations. Even the ad hoc commission, which was established in 1998 by the IOC to examine the actions of the IOC members, admitted that the members engaged in an improper conduct and attributed that to the fact that different societies view gifts in different ways and that "many members live in societies that operate this way" (Post et al, 2002, p. According to the Special Bid Oversight Commission, which was established by the U. That's why, the rules that should be established must be compliance-based ones instead of integrity based, where close scrutiny and comprehensive guidelines should be followed by employees. This is helpful for the IOC, since its members come from different cultures and they have different interpretations for ethics and bribery. This handbook must not be thrown in the drawers of the employees, but it should be followed up by training in order to adapt it into the Olympics' operations until the atmosphere fills with moral actions.
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