Blogathon Post 12: The Gifting Theory

It was meant to be a routine interview with an expert to understand the market. Of course, there was one difference - the person was a government employee.
My colleague and I were well prepared for the interview, until our manager sent us an SMS. 
"Buy a gift for the person and make sure it is a good one."
"Like Sweets?" We texted back.
"No, like expensive stuff" He replied, giving us a budget.
Clueless, we bought some quality stationary for him and conducted the interview. 
Post that session (which went well BTW), pulling our manager's leg, we exclaimed sarcastically, "So, that was unexpected."
He said, "Don't blame me! He called up asking if you guys will be bringing a gift or not.".
To say that we were surprised is putting it mildly.

I have been raised by an idealistic couple who placed a lot of importance to ethics and morality, more so than tradition and culture. My father, though a Government servant all his life, has not taken a single bribe. Though he did get these 'gifts' - of sweet packets and stuff, it didn't stop him from doing his job, which he believed very strongly in (he was in IT, PF and Pension departments through his career span). 

So, my dad accepted gifts without doing anything in return. Without experience, I am not sure whether the asking of gifts (and not money) in return for some information (Which is supposed to be part of the public domain) should be considered as a bribe or not. But the audacity of the asking for it, like a kid asking for a return gift in a birthday party, stumps me.

Have you had similar experiences?

The common corporate parasite

Ethics in a company is like a parasite that passes on from one level to another. While it is true that being ethical is up to an individual, the implementation in professional life is strongly influenced by the characteristic of our immediate manager and not the company. Do you really believe that a company has a written rule saying: “lie to the customer” or “ Tamper your data as long as you get the money”?

So, how does the worm of unethical operations spread from a single person? What if a strongly righteous person is caught in the middle of it? I believe it can all be explained with a simple flow-chart:

Depending on how ethical a manager is, the thought processes of his sub-ordinates and future leaders spawned are determined (unless they leave the company). Either they successfully convert an analyst, or force them to leave the company.

This is precisely the reason why any consulting firm cannot be called unethical or bogus. Every company has hard-working analysts who struggle to provide more than the expectations of their customer. They are unfortunately overshadowed by the majority of consultants sweet-talking the clients into buying a summary of google findings.

I have had the fortune of working with people belonging in the former category, and hence have a very high opinion of consulting and market research.Generalising a consultant’s Modus Operandi based on a few disillusioned forced-to-be-unethical analysts seems very illogical to me. But I am curious to know if you have a different point of view on this!