Are Facilitating Payments (speed Payments) Ethical?
Facilitating payments are small gifts of payments that are made to a person, to obtain a favor and normally to get advantage of something like obtaining a permit, license or service, avoiding an abuse of power or expediting an administrative process. They are usually made to public officials or employees of a private company, are the most common used form of corruption and often excused of the lack of professionalism and disorganization and accepted, because they are seen as a – more or less – small help to run a better business. It is sure, that starting this small corruption may cause the start of a more serious form of corruption, it affects the ethical attitude of a company and the payer gets an illegal competitive advantage. These facts lead me to the conclusion that facilitating payments are absolutely unethical, but too commonly used that its going to decline, because competitors may also take advantage of their own facilitating payments.
The central aspects of a culture are values and norms that a society shares. This also includes beliefs, laws, language, education, economic philosophy and other capabilities that are accepted and lived by the society in the country. These factors are different in the various countries across the globe and accordingly create different societies and cultures.
When planning business in a specific country, it is important to analyze and evaluate the environment in which the business is going to operate, because the costs of doing business in a country refers to the existing or potential situation and the culture of a country. Different countries may have different requirements on their employees and can affect the hours and days they can work, healthcare that may must be provided, gestures that can vary in their meaning, the way of working together in a company and thereby the relationship between work roles and the dealing with business situations, that may cause extra costs that need to be considered