Corruption in the form of bribes is a pervasive issue in society that affects businesses, introduces inefficiencies in an economy, and affects common people due to the diverting of resources from needed public services to enrich undeserving individuals (Herre et al., 2025; Holmes, 2015). This lecture is the result of reflections on the personal experiences of the speaker of attempted corruption when he was in business, and collaboration with a colleague to extract general lessons by framing the findings within ethical theory.
The speaker will delve into the issue of corruption and business ethics with the intention of exploring if there are cases in which paying a bribe by a business leader might be potentially justifiable and ethically acceptable. He will do this by attempting to demonstrate that, in sum, we are left in the following situation. According to consequentialism, we should live our lives in accordance with certain common-sense or deontological principles, while recognizing the truth of the consequentialist principle itself as an account of what makes actions right (Hare, 1981, ch.3). According to deontology, also, we should live our lives in accordance with common-sense principles, one of those principles itself being that, in certain cases, we are required to make the world as good as possible, even if that requires going against certain other principles, which, in this case, have less practical weight[1].
After an introductory presentation, the speaker will put forward two or three real-life cases that he has lived through to generate a structured discussion amongst the participants, with the intention that at the end of it they respond to the question of the title.