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Offering
and Accepting Gifts |
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Gifts
from clients, customers, suppliers, and bidders are a
particularly sticky issue because they are sometimes part
of accepted practice, and it is expected that token gifts
may be exchanged. You must, however, avoid selecting a
bidder based on anything other than the bidder's professional
competence, product quality, or price. Accepting a "gift"
could give a bidder an unfair advantage, so it's important
for you to know what the standard is for your situation.
How big a gift is too big? Some businesses are quite explicit
about setting a threshold value, perhaps $10 or $25, allowing
coffee mugs, pens, calendars, and memo pads (all with
the provider's company logo, of course), but not Caribbean
cruises, cases of bourbon, or vacation weekends at a skiing
or golf resort. Presumably, a gift becomes a bribe when
it affects your professional judgment.
Incidentally, ethicists make a distinction between bribery
(payment to get an unfair advantage) and extortion (payment
to get what you should receive anyway). The former is
unethical, while the latter is not, at least for the payer
of extortion.
Here is an ethics module on political contributions: http://www.murdough.ttu.edu/EthicsModule/Ethics2.htm
In this situation, an engineer is asked to contribute
to the political campaign of a local official who will
have some decision-making authority on the engineer's
business.
Here is an ethics module on the acceptance of free registration
for a seminar: http://www.onlineethics.org/.../SeminarBER.aspx.
In this case, an engineer must decide whether to attend
an educational seminar sponsored by a potential vendor.
He is not sure whether attending the free seminar, along
with a buffet lunch and a cocktail reception, will affect
his future professional purchases.
For further reading, consider this ethics module on the
acceptance of gifts: http://ethics.tamu.edu/ethics/giftgive/giftgiv1.htm.
It contains an extensive discussion on the issue of gift-giving
and the question of when a gift becomes a bribe. |
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