Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Paul Reynolds
Southern Cross University
The following paper will review ethical tensions In all countries, corruption does serious damage
experienced by some expatriate hotel managers. to the standards of public life, the institutions
These managers often work in countries with of government, the cohesion of society and the
codes of ethical practice different from those management of the economy. It does particular
of their employer and their contemporaries. The harm to developing countries, where the
paper will review a range of literature dealing political fabric may be thinner, civic institutions
with the topic and also report on an empirical less firmly based and the economy more fragile.
study where opinions were solicited from a Corruption in a developing country is a heavy
group of fourteen hotel managers, trained in burden on economic activity. It raises costs and
Western countries, who had working experience blunts competitiveness. It distorts management
in hotels in the Asia-Pacific region. decision making, making it more difficult, for
In the past thirty years, the tourism industry example, to gauge the exact consequences of
has seen a proliferation of multinational investment, spending, tax and regulatory
corporations operating throughout the world. decisions.
These companies are, for the most part, based In December 1998, the Convention on
in Europe and the USA. They all have a Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials
permanent force of professional managers who in International Business Transactions was
are dispersed throughout the world to set up signed by the twenty-nine nations that make up
and manage their properties. the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and
The rapid globalisation of the industry has Development (OECD). This marked a
brought forward the question of whether watershed in the acceptance that bribery and
hospitality and tourism operations can be corruption are commonplace in international
managed in a uniform manner regardless of the business transactions, especially in less
country in which they operate. Can a developed countries (LDCs).
multinational company apply uniform On a lesser, but no less pervasive scale, there
personnel policies and procedures, and establish are regular reports of officials in many countries
homogeneous managerial practices in all their demanding money for granting of all kinds of
operations, or are these allowed to vary country permits, ranging from visas to building
by country? Several authors have investigated applications. It is highly likely that managers
expatriate managerial effectiveness (Richards of hospitality organisations operating in LDCs
1991; Yu and Pine 1994; Li and Tse 1998). will come into contact with this level of
Globalisation of the business environment corruption, along with bribery, nepotism and
has created an increasingly complex set of cronyism.
relationships for the modern business manager. Nye (1967) describes corruption (by
According to Hofstede (1993) the consequences government officials) as behaviour, which
for managerial practices resulting from cultural deviates from the normal duties of a public role
differences are numerous and significant. If because of private (regarding family, close
there is divergence between managerial or private clique) or pecuniary or status gains. This
corporate values and work practice values, then includes such behaviour as bribery, (use of
there are likely to be significant problems in reward to pervert the judgement of a person in
managing the workforce. Values affect attitudes a place of trust); nepotism, (bestowal of
that, in turn, affect behaviour. There can patronage by reasons of an ascribable
therefore be a lack of congruence between a relationship rather than merit); and
manager’s personal values and her/his misappropriation, (illegal appropriation of
behaviour at work. Such incongruence also public resources for private regarding uses).
occurs for the expatriate manager when To this list we can add the practice of
corporate values do not conform with work cronyism. This can be described as bestowing
values in the country of operation. One such favours on close acquaintances who might be
lack of equilibrium is created by the presence of the same religion, club, organisation, social
in the operating country of what the group or have been to the same school or
organisation would consider corrupt business university (Nye 1967). These practices are
practice. rarely officially reported, but in several Asian
Cultural
experiences
Ethical Moral
belief standards of
systems behaviour Financial
Legal
Content of
management Organisational
Economic dilemma
Social
and social
situation Personal
Adapted from Homer, L.T., 1987, Ethical analysis and human resource management.
Human Resource Management. Fall, Vol. 26:3, pp. 313-330