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 corpo

This means that the background that these members come from is a luxurious one, and that receiving classy expensive gifts is part of their culture. 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. But this also goes back to the role that cultures play in doing business, as Japanese people are natural gift givers and it"tms acceptable for them to treat the IOC members in this way. As the book suggests, "His lifestyle may have set a poor example for the other members of the IOC" (Post et al, 2002, p. 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"tm operations until the atmosphere fills with moral actions. According to our book, Hodler"tms rules prohibited members from staying in bid cities for more than three days and accepting gifts that were not limited to information and documentation and of a value more than 150. 87), as Samaranch had a great influence on the IOC. And even Samaranch himself didn"tmt follow the rules or guidelines developed by Hodler, as he used to go to the most luxurious places with the excuse that he had no vote on the committee. I think that ethical standards were not properly nor effectively imposed on the Olympics games, as no specific guidelines were developed, and even the manager, who is supposed to act as a role model for everyone else, didn"tmt do a good job in that either. For a committee to act ethically, it should be headed by an ethical person that sets out as a perfect example for the members, as the book states, "When senior-level managers signal employees that they believe ethics should receive high priority in all business decisions, a giant step is taken toward improving ethical performance throughout the company" (Post et al, 2002, p. I think that Salt Lake City"tms 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. I think that this justification is very essential in my discussion, as it applies on the Salt Lake City case, where members of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee (SLOC) were accused of spoiling the image of the Olympics by performing an unethical action, bribery, in order to be selected as the location for the Olympic Winter Games in year 2002. What"tms very surprising, yet very helpful in clarifying the behavior of the IOC members is that according to our book, "first-class airfare, luxury accommodations, expensive dinners, transportation, and entertainment were all standard for IOC members visiting bid cities" (Post et al, 2002, p.