Siemens . Exam - Case Study Example

Further investigation into the corruption cases involving Siemens shows that there are more cases in its overseas branches where the company maintains slush funds for the purpose of paying bribes as was the case in Greece, where it had a large amount of euros set aside for bribes to win contracts and tenders. The cases involve different governments covering sensitive areas such as intelligence and surveillance. In this cases, top government official in Greece reaped massive gains. Other counties involved in the scandal other than Greece include Germany, Switzerland, Italy and the USA for paying large sums to win contracts.

Defenses by the company towards the bribery charges indicate the lack of ethics and it actually admits to have paid bribes to different companies and different government officials. One of the main defense claims was that it was never a crime to bribe a company outside of Germany, in the cases that occurred prior to 2002. This covered cases that occurred from 1999 and up until 2002, in which case the bribery became public knowledge in 2003. The validity of the claims made by Siemens were questionable and were deemed to be invalid following the existence of regulation outlawing bribery of companies outside of Germany before 2002 as it was still effective before 1999.

The ethical standing of Siemens in this case indicates that the company is ethically corrupt when a utilitarian approach is used to define the case of Siemens. This is where the company overlooked the effects of its action towards other well deserving companies prior to bribery to win foreign contracts. As such, the company sought the cheapest way to bring business to itself while ruining other companies instead of following the right channels as expected. The main concern for the company lies with the shareholder and its ability to maintain their wealth as well as increase it.

Therefore, this drives the company towards bribery as the immediate economic benefits are appealing and rewarding, while the long-term can be borne by future leaders of the same company saving shareholder a lot of immediate trouble in poor share sales. Using the different theories of ethics to discern this issue brings utilitarianism into perspective, as it is the only theory that focuses on the product and not on the means through which it is achieved. In any case, when it does pay attention to the means through which objectives are achieved, it only does so in relation to the cheapest and most convenient way and not on its impact on others.

Thus, Siemens paid attention to the utilitarian theory that saw it ignore fundamental knowledge on bribery to bring unfair advantage and profits to itself denying other firms their own fair chance at winning contracts the legal way. In addition, the company could have used other means to secure contracts in foreign countries without having to pay bribes such as improving their own conduct, as considering the amount of funds used in bribes and comparing it to the profits, legal business would result in better returns.

This denies the executives a proper defense since it does not even safeguard the interests and needs of the shareholders since when caught