Carrefour Staff Caught in Swoop on Bribery
September 12th, 2007 · No Comments
This article about Carrefour China set me thinking
Central European and Russian media are rocked by corruption scandals from time to time, but I don’t remember the entire management of a company being picked up like this, unless political moves like Yukos count.Can any readers of this blog give examples ? I’ve heard of examples by word of mouth (and one famous retailer firing some members of staff because of it).What are the best (IE worst) examples of anti-corruption policies in international and Polish companies that anyone knows of ? I remember a manager from one of the world’s best known companies telling me proudly “we have never fired anyone for corruption in
Central Europe” and looking very upset when I suggested that that might be a bad sign.
“If you don’t know what is going on, it is usually worse than you think” is a depressing business reality.Three suggestions Ask yourself the question “what would a person do (rather than say) if they were completely corrupt in this situation?”If their behaviour matches your forecast it should set an alarm bell ringing. Examples might include:wanting to go to meetings alonehaving private e-mail addresses on their business cardssaying “I’ll call you back” when you walk into the roombuying a car way beyond their visible means.Alarm bells should be followed with further checks, and an investigation. Institutionalize anti-corruption The second suggestion is to institutionalize anti-corruption in your relations with vendors. I was impressed to receive a standard letter from the CEO of the
Singapore office of one our clients telling us that we should not offer gifts to their staff, and that if we did we would lose their business. It is a great idea, and one that has happened just once in my 30 years in business. Our client could also have asked me to sign a declaration that we wouldn’t try to bribe them, which I would have done gladly. Make sure that your vendors know what to do if one of their staff tries to solicit a bribe. Put yourself in the position of a vendor facing this situation. Who do you tell, who knows, are you safe, will you be protected? As a vendor, if you are not sure, very often you will just do nothing. Even worse of course - the vendor goes along with it, pays your employee a bribe - and you end up with a corrupt supplier and employee working against your company’s interests.Richard Lucas
Managing Director
www.pmrcorporate.com
Tags: PMR Commentries
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