Bribery cross Cultures Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Bribery cross Cultures - Research Paper Example However, the same is not true for all cultures. In countries such as China, Russia, Mexico, India and others bribes are a part of everyday business, on the other hand, countries such as â€Å"Netherlands, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, and others rank the lowest in this list† (Supraner, 2010). Furthermore, the probability of occurrence of bribery related incidents is most likely in sector such as real estate, property development, oil and gas, construction, manufacturing, mining and public sector contracts. Furthermore, it appears that countries with particularistic cultures, which believe more in flexibility and adaption of rules according to situation, are more likely to accept and rationalize bribers. However, countries with universalistic cultures, which believe that rules and regulations should remain the same for all and under all circumstances, are more likely to resist bribes and see it as unethical (Supraner, 2010). Since the perceptions about bribery differ with cultu res it presents a great ethical challenge for companies to work in different cultures with satisfying their clients and preserving their ethical principles at the same time. Nevertheless, a prevailing culture of bribery in any country does not provide a rationalization of engaging in the practice (Supraner, 2010). Article # 2 - Shell Bribes Among Culture of Corruption,' Panalpina Admits During the fall of 2010, â€Å"Shell and five other companies paid 236.5 million US dollars to the United States Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission due to the charges of corruption† (Voreacos & Calkins, 2010). Company officials agreed in front of the jury that during the period of 2002-2007, they paid thousands of dollars in bribes in â€Å"Angola, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Russia, and Turkmenistan† (Voreacos & Calkins, 2010). These bribes were paid to avoid custom processes, quick processing, and brining counter band drugs and arms in these coun tries. Surprisingly, the top management of the company and majority of the employees were involved in these practices. Furthermore, these bribes were not a matter of one or two events but bribes were being paid to highest government officials as â€Å"gifts† so that they would preference to the clients and documents of Shell and Panalpina. Working in these countries for so many years, Panalpina had created 160 terms of bribes such as evacuations†, â€Å"export formalities†, sunshine† and â€Å"black cash† (Voreacos & Calkins, 2010). Despite the fact that these companies, which also include â€Å"Pride International, Transocean, Tidewater, Noble and GlobalSantaFe† (Voreacos & Calkins, 2010), accepted their wrong doings but they also admitted that in the absence of these bribes, doing business in those countries becomes impossible. In short, the article stresses on the point that there are countries where bribe is a norm and even worse, a need. In the absence of the same, officials would deliberately try to put barriers in your way of business to force you to pay bribes. They would create an environment to trouble or woo away the customers thus leaving the company with no choice except for paying the money to those people, in order to ensure its survival (Voreacos & Calkins, 2010). Article # 3 – Corruption across Borders As the world economy and business markets are becoming global,

Portfolio Management Statistics Project Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Portfolio Management - Statistics Project Example The stock returns values experience wide variance due to the fluctuation in portfolio weights across the period. From the set of 28 stocks, the time series was filtered on the criteria of performance to retain the 11 stocks shown in the time series as the most efficient portfolio. The process of refining the investment involved ignoring the portfolio with low weights and retaining the high weight portfolio. The selection aimed at picking 3 stocks with the best returns to represent the high efficiency required in the pool decision. The high efficiency stocks were found to be IBM and MMM. The decision was made on the values based on the original currency returns. The time series for the refined investment pool carries the following stock: The major reason for reducing the number of stocks in the refined investment is that many assets have caused a wide variation of the portfolio weights and return on investment (Tobin 1958, p. 65). The analysis sets up individual each of the assets independently to as to classify them as either risky assets or risk free assets using the correlation projections. The refinement judges the investment by their return, hence; it operates with the few selected manageable stocks to reduce the portfolio size by ignoring the low return stocks. The tangent portfolio was constructed using the Matlab program. The program uses the data entries from the covariance matrix with the new weights of portfolios. The mean return values and the optimal portfolio variances are shown with the least variance portfolio return averaging approximately 14.6%. After making the entry of the matrix, the exercise is repeated for the reduction of the variance to show the restricted efficient frontier as shown in figure 6 below. The assumption made in the construction of the frontier is that investment can run on negative portfolio weights, even though the current weights are positive. The