Becton Dickinson Case

Becton Dickinson: Ethics and Business Practices

Problematic: The challenge that Becton Dickinson (BD) is facing is how to harmonize its professional ethics and work practices throughout the world in accordance with the prevailing business practices and environment. Employees are looking for greater guidance and a clearer stance from top management on which they could refer to, to handle ethical issues in terms of gifts, gratuities, payments, entertainment, conflicts of interest, and related matters. In the meanwhile, BD has an ambitious plan to push for performance: moving into new markets and shifting away from distributor based sales in order to boost the company’s ROE (20%) and the annual growth of sales (10%).

Global View: Commercial bribery has long been considered as “business as usual” by multinationals. The change in regulation materialized by the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in 1977 was seen as a burden and a competitive disadvantage by U.S. businesses. Later on, the mid 90’s saw a rise of a global anticorruption movement especially which heightened attention worldwide to problems of bribery and corruption. Public officials, press, academics, researchers, and NGOs, for instance Transparency International, were involved in taking actions to outlaw any form of corruption. Many organizations (UN, AID, OMC, WB, WTO, OAS, OECD, etc.) followed the movement in adopting guidelines, recommendations, and declarations against unethical business practices and also implementing anti-bribery and anti-corruption standards (ICC).

From the BD field, managers from different locations face localized challenges, have to cope with “gray area” favors and payments, and clearly distinguish between what could be acceptable and not acceptable regarding the company’s actual policy and regulation:

Asia-Pacific: no fair competition on this strategic market where the potential of growth is significant. The main issues are gifts, gratuities, culture, and family connections....