Yes but that isn't just down to the company, i have a good boss and co-workers. I hated my last company.
I also started back in Feb at a not for profit that helps troubled youth, it does give you a different view. Worked for a large corporation before that, had some dark spots in its history as most large corporations will, it took advantage of 9-11 to announce layoffs 10 days after it happened and blamed it all on the expected downturn in the economy that 9-11 was supposed to cause (surprised I did not get laid off then because I made no bones about calling my management team out on the obvious bull shit, they had the downsizing planned and where just hiding behind 9-11 to make it look like it was beyond their control).
My best mate from school days went into programming and his firm picked up a missile guidance contract around 20 years ago, he refused to work on that contract and the company was fine with it moving him onto other non-military projects.
Areas like child labour, poor pay and working conditions and lower health and safety standards and environmental concerns in other countries are a minefield but it is up to everyone to try to hold companies responsible for their actions and it's easier to do that from within rather than standing on the sidelines protesting. Unfortunately once companies go global they do tend to seek the lowest cost base for new manufacturing facilities or to claim they have to work to local standards in order top win work and it's very easy from the swish head office in London or Paris to focus on the bottom line and gloss over ethical issues by making blanket corporate policy statements denouncing corruption, exploitation and danger in the workplace. I've worked for a couple of huge civil engineering multinationals and had to make judgement calls on many of these issues on a regular basis to ensure work progressed but that the company was not exposed to undue risk and that both my and the companies ethics were comfortable, in the Philippines or India the odd brown envelope being passed over by a local member of staff was sadly the norm on most major projects and so long as it wasn't a huge amount and it was being done to keep a project moving rather than as a bribe to procure work then you would generally turn a blind eye, we also had to cut almost half our staff in one office thanks to a corrupt culture that had committed large scale fraud and in one instance had to strike off one of our principal suppliers when it became apparent that he thought offering the services of prostitutes was an acceptable way of solving problems.
I don't think you need Diageo to make 'Russia' and 'drinking' go together.
How did that actually work within a multinational company?
I wasn't looking, how would I know?
(the research itself is on yeast, but I'm sure it can have combat implications in the long term). Gets broken down into client entertainment expenses or something not really traceable like that. Not like getting a fake receipt is that hard in those places. Anyways most companies big or small have small slush funds process to get these done. It's a existing hidden reality, not really a novel/new thing. Cost of doing business, to put it bluntly.
The big bosses back in corporate head office don't like to hear it though when they have you sign all the anti-graft policies, I love to remind them how removed they are from the real world at times just to see the shock on their faces. It's fine typing up anti corruption and exploitation policies and health, safety and environmental statements from head office and insisting all staff have to sign them and are aware of the risk of instant dismissal for breach when you're sat in an office and never set foot on a real site.
Selling crack outside primary schools might just be morally defensible, but what you just suggested is frankly sickening.
Tbh, I don't think any boss is really that removed. Most don't get to that level without knowing the clean and dirty side of business. The applicable term is 'plausible deniability'. As long as one pretends and acts surprised, they can get away with it. Everyone involved does this knowing the consequence of getting caught will be to get thrown under the bus....but still does as it is simply how business is done in many areas of the world.
Marketing to adults was legal but their tactics involved campaigns that would appeal to children as well.
I strongly doubt Diageo's policy was to create a nation of alcoholics who use alcohol to cope with stress.
You're probably right with the bosses on the construction side in my industry but the policies tend to be written by a new breed of plug and play HR, HSE or finance director who often have no connection to the industry in question or clue of what the company actually does to pay their salary. My latest clash with one of this breed was our IT security director who issued a policy forbidding staff to use any external file transfer service like dropbox or wetransfer, I tried to explain how our customers send us 100s of Mb of drawings and site reports and without them we could do no business but he couldn't get his head around it and still seems more concerned about any of us communicating with the outside world simply because someone in head office wire transferred a few grand to a Nigerian 401 scammer in a whaling attack last year.
Ive worked in FTSE blue chip's all my life, where these sorts of things are supposedly sackable offences. So Im intrigued as to how it actually happens?
Very interesting. Like you, Ive worked in corporate Asia for many years and there are many of these 'spiritual events' that require money. But you still never answered my question: How do you get the actual 'brown envelope cash' into your hands, and how do you reclaim that from the firm?I wasn't looking, how would I know?
Seriously though, when bidding on large civil contracts there are always fairly large sundries and entertainment budgets built into the project management fees. They're supposedly there to cover minor items overlooked in the bill of quantities whilst the entertainment budget would cover various items like religious ceremonies and blessings that were needed at various stages of projects in Asia, especially after an accident but also for topping out, contract milestones like multiples of a million man hours worked with no reportible incidents etc. The few brown bags I saw were small enough that they'd have been written off in part of that budget. What worried me with them though was it was often people like the design checkers (with other big multinational consultancies) who would hold you to ransom refusing to sign off on a perfectly functional design unless they were paid. I was always satisfied that my design was good and had usually wasted half a day of their and my time explaining it to the 10th decimal place before twigging what was going on but I did wonder how many shoddy designs got approved by these same clowns especially as the country in question has a structural failure rate 10 times the norm elsewhere.
I never touched it, it was usually a driver that handed it over to their driver or secretary with the demands usually being filtered through the sales and marketing manager who had secured the subcontract. I'm pretty sure the git used to send me to answer their "design queries" that were holding up the whole project with the driver instructed to make the payments just within my eyeline so they could throw me under the bus if anything ever came of it. I found it quite amusing as everything dodgy I saw was noted and reported to head office as I'd been put into that office since we already suspected things were far more rotten than a few brown envelopes, to the tune of US$20M as it eventually turned out.
Even if a person who knows how thing work writes the laws, it still would not be acknowledged far less accepted in public. So be it, a project head or HR the laws would still be holier than thou and practice continues underneath.
I have a corporate credit card, which technically has no limits, though we have internal policies which govern the expenses.
Hmm. Should have included that into the OP!
I'd do it. For at least a week. Then once their away whites came out pink cause I threw a home kit in the wash they'd sack me.
