Ziqitza Health Care Limited: Responding to Corruption

Sweta Mangal, CEO of Ziqitza Health Care Limited, must decide how to respond to a government official who has demanded a bribe to release payment for the ambulance services ZHL provides. Bribery is commonplace in India, but there is also a growing anti-corruption movement. A new employee argues that the bribe is the only way for ZHL to make payroll and maintain its ambulances, which means more lives saved. Mangal insists that ZHL is committed to an anti-bribery stance. What is the right decision? How can it best be implemented?

1. To examine bribery - its distinguishing characteristics, different forms, the ethics involved , and the anti-bribery movement - as well as corporate responses to demands for bribes. 2. To highlight for social enterprises the importance of the means ('how it is done') as well as the ends in creating social as well as economic value.