By Dee Smith
In the first 3 parts of this post, I discussed the nature and history of corruption in non-Western cultures and in the modern West.
Whatever we in the West tell ourselves about the “objectivity” of our institutions, a great deal of life still operates in terms of familial and friendship connections, affinity with like persons, membership in groups (from criminal gangs to professional and religious organizations), and reciprocal obligations. This is the result of human evolution. As we evolved in small societies of like individuals based on trust, outsiders were seen as untrustworthy at best and often presumed to be enemies unless proven otherwise. In many cultures, they still are. Group belonging and identity in all its forms is one of the constants across cultures and time.
There have been many concerted efforts to change these embedded practices. For example, “legacy” admissions of students at universities in the US have recently come under attack as being unfair (which they are). Sweeping efforts are being made to eliminate them, but it is likely they will change only in form, not in substance.
Corruption in Africa, the Middle East, South and East Asia, and Latin America has been profoundly influenced by European conquest and colonization. As an example (and to vastly oversimplify): Latin America was mostly colonized by the imperial powers of Spain and Portugal, and their fundamental goal was to extract wealth and send it back to the regent. The British colonization of India, in contrast, was for centuries managed by a private enterprise, the East India Company, and the goal was to enrich shareholders back in the homeland.
Enriching shareholders in the homeland was also sometimes the goal in North America, for example with the Hudson Bay Company. In many cases, however, North America was settled by individuals and small groups (who were not state-sanctioned), often from the lower rungs of society, fleeing religious and other persecution, and seeking to create a new life in a “new world”—essentially by seizing it from its inhabitants. The goal of these colonists was to produce material prosperity for themselves, in their new homes, not to send it back to the motherland. The legacy of those very different goals informs social realities in Latin America and North America, respectively, to the present day.
Corruption, as we have seen, is a complex issue, and trying to understand it is a monumental task. Generally, it is over-simplified to the point that the descriptions correspond little with the actuality. And all too often, it is simply a blame game where “I’m right and you are wrong.”
From a practical standpoint, what is a Western businessperson to do when confronted with corruption in Africa, Latin America, or anywhere? Lecturing people from other cultures about “their” corruption is very bad form and therefore often bad for business. Furthermore, as we have seen, corruption is equally present in the West—it just works in a different direction—and much of the pronounced culture of corruption that exists in such countries is a legacy of the colonial and commercial goals of the Western powers that colonized these countries and extracted their wealth.
On a practical basis, for many reasons—legal, ethical, moral, or financial—a businessperson from the U.S., the U.K., or many other Western countries simply cannot engage in activities that their own jurisdiction defines as illegal corruption, however endemic it may be in a country in which they are working.
My advice is threefold: first, do your homework and make sure before you initiate talks with a potential partner that they do not represent an individual, family, company, or other party known for egregious corruption. Stay away from those.
Second, be very well informed in advance of what specifically is defined as corruption in the laws of your country, of the country where you are operating, and of the countries in which your investors or other partners are based. All are crucially important.
Third, if and when you are confronted by corruption, the best procedure is legalistic. Something like the following is a good approach: “I simply cannot do that or anything associated with it. It is against the law in my country. If I did it, it would threaten my ability to continue to do business, and quite possibly threaten my personal freedom.”
In that way, you are not “calling out” anyone, you are not making a value judgement of right or wrong, and you are not on a high horse criticizing anybody’s culture. You are simply drawing a bright-line around what you can and cannot do—a bright-line required by the legal regime of your country.
And then, if you have to, you need to be willing simply to walk away.
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