Corruption, Culture, and Markets
Nowadays, corruption has become an octopus whose tentacles reach all countries and domains. Still, as Lipset and Lenz emphasized in their article, despite this phenomenon's ubiquity across historic moments and cultural backgrounds, the issue which makes the difference consists of the degree to which this plague extends. Generally, when speaking about corruption, most people think of public affairs and omit the private dimension of the aspect. An eloquent example outlining the latter may be the incentive plan proposed by Sears, Roebuck, and Co., after confronting severe financial difficulties in the 1980's. The American company suggested a commission-based program which was expected to increase profits as a result of the employees' (both mechanics and sales advisors) effort to produce or sale more, in order to earn additional revenues. At a first glance, the idea seemed very efficient as it had the desired impact on revenues, but at a closer look, it led to major deficiencies because of the customers' complaints regarding payments made for unnecessary repairs. Therefore, if we were to detail Lipset's and Lenz's definition of corruption as a "misuse of public power for private benefits", we could say that in the Sears case, the co
Yet, it accounts for an important part of his conduct. In addition to all these, managers put a great pressure on employees in order to reach the established quotas. In this context, an eloquent hint for explaining such a conduct can be considered Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs that the American psychologist mentioned in his paper - A Theory of Motivation from 1943. I have recently been threatened with termination if my production didn't at least equal Sears' minimum quotas. Supposing that this measure was taken for assessing performance and increasing profits, as the company's CEO declared after being accused by the California Department of Consumer Affairs, it becomes very simple to prove the contrary, when reading the CEO's statements. On the other hand, partially because of their greed as Fabri asserts, mechanics used to "cut corners on, or eliminate altogether, procedures required to complete the repair correction" (Trevino, and Nelson, 2007). The same idea was emphasized by social surveys that focused on quantifying the correlation between corruption and certain indicators like the Index of Economic Freedom (IEF) or per capita income. mpany's management abused of the clients' financial resources and good will for increasing the profit through its own employees. At a further glance, he will certainly induce that the main responsible is the company's management because it introduced commissions closely related to sales and production quotas. Actually, studies founded on Merton's conclusion proved that developed countries are less corrupted while underdeveloped or developing ones are situated at their antipode. Consequently, the main lever that facilitated the appearance of such a negative phenomena was the corporation' s personnel who, being obsessed with the poor financial resources, aimed at gaining more and consented to "steal" from clients as this was the easiest way to achieve their target.
Common topics in this essay:
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Trevino Nelson,
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Richard Bryan,
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Acceptance Essays
