Chapter 20 — Exercises

These exercises train the single hardest skill in this chapter: holding two true things at once — that the relationship system is real and worth honoring, and that the compliance line is real and cannot be crossed. Most of what follows asks you to locate specific situations on the spectrum and to build the scripts you'll need before you're under social pressure to improvise them.

Selected answers and sample responses appear in Appendix: Answers to Selected Exercises. Exercises marked with ✍️ feed directly into your Cultural Intelligence Portfolio.

Nothing here is legal advice. The point is to think clearly enough to know when to stop and call your compliance team — which is the most important skill of all.

Part A — Check Your Understanding

Short answers in your own words. If you can't answer one, reread the matching section before moving on.

  1. In two sentences, explain why guanxi and wasta are not accurately translated as "corruption" — and what they actually do in a relationship-first society.
  2. The chapter calls the recipient question — "is this person a government official?" — the line that matters most. Why does that single fact change the legal situation so dramatically, and why is the category "official" broader than most Westerners assume?
  3. List the five questions that locate a gift on the legitimate-gray-illegal map. Which two, combined, are the most dangerous when both point toward "risk up"?
  4. What is a facilitation payment, and why is it more dangerous than its small size suggests? How do the FCPA and the UK Bribery Act differ on it?
  5. The chapter says a clear written policy is "a cultural gift to you personally," not just a legal shield for your company. Explain what it means by that.
  6. Why is making a refusal moral — implying the other person was trying to bribe you — described as the single worst way to decline?
  7. Restate the chapter's "Honesty Box" position in one sentence: what does a reputable firm do when the expectation is genuinely corrupt?

Part B — Check Your Assumptions

This chapter is full of Western intuitions that feel like neutral ethics but are partly cultural. For each statement below, decide what is genuinely a hard legal/ethical line versus what is a cultural preference dressed as a universal. Then write one sentence on how the relationship-first system would see it.

  1. "Business decisions should be made on the merits, with personal relationships kept entirely separate."
  2. "Accepting an expensive gift from a vendor compromises your integrity."
  3. "If I help my business contact's child get an internship, that's nepotism and it's wrong."
  4. "A real partnership shouldn't need gifts and favors to keep it going — the contract should be enough."
  5. "Spending three dinners building a relationship before any business is discussed is inefficient and a bit much."

The point of this exercise is not that the Western view is wrong — on bribery itself it is backed by hard law you must obey. The point is to separate the part that is a non-negotiable legal/ethical line (don't bribe officials) from the part that is a cultural style (keep relationships out of business entirely), which the other system reasonably rejects. Confusing the two makes you either reckless or insultingly cold.

Part C — Decode This

Each item is a real cross-cultural moment in the gift-and-favor zone. Write (a) what the Western reader probably fears or assumes it means, and (b) a more accurate reading inside the relationship system — then (c) note which of the five framework questions you'd most want answered before acting.

  1. At a first meeting in China, your counterpart presents you with a gift using both hands. You reach for it and they seem to pull back slightly; then they offer it again.
  2. A potential partner in the Gulf insists on paying for every meal, refuses all your attempts to reciprocate, and seems mildly hurt when you push to split a bill.
  3. A government client mentions, warmly, that his nephew is "very bright" and "would love to learn from a company like yours."
  4. Your trusted local agent says a permit is stuck but that he "knows the right people" and can "handle it" for an extra fee, the nature of which he waves off as "you don't need to worry about the details."

Part D — What Would You Do?

Real situations, each with several responses. There is no single tidy answer for the cultural part — but several have a hard legal line you must not cross. For each, pick the response closest to your instinct, then write why a culturally fluent and compliant person might choose differently.

1. The watch. You are the sales director from the chapter, holding a luxury watch your trusted local partner says you must give the permit-signing official, "or he'll be offended." Do you (a) give it — when in Rome, and your partner knows best; (b) flatly refuse and lecture your partner about the FCPA; (c) thank your partner warmly, explain that your company's worldwide policy forbids personal gifts to officials, and ask his help finding a clean way to show respect (a group meal, a modest institutional token); (d) give a cheaper watch as a compromise? What does each option do to (i) the relationship and (ii) your legal exposure — and why is the "compromise" in (d) a trap?

2. The internship. A senior official at a state-owned client tells you his daughter is applying for jobs and asks, with a smile, whether your company "might have something for her." She may genuinely be talented. Do you (a) create a role for her to secure the relationship; (b) refuse and treat the request as an attempted bribe; (c) warmly invite her to apply through the normal, open process and promise a fair look like any strong candidate, documenting the whole thing; (d) quietly arrange an "internship" off the books? Which option honors the relationship and survives an investigation — and what makes the "off the books" version the most dangerous of all?

3. The stuck shipment. Your goods are sitting at a port. A low-level official makes clear that a "small fee" — cash, no receipt — will get the routine paperwork stamped today rather than in three weeks. Do you (a) pay it as a normal cost of doing business; (b) refuse and absorb the delay while escalating through proper channels; (c) pay but log it honestly in the books; (d) have your local agent "take care of it" so you don't have to know? Consider how a UK-covered company must treat this versus the narrow US exception, why most multinationals ban it outright, and why option (d) gives you no protection at all.

Part E — Cultural Translation: Build Your Decline Scripts

The chapter's most practical skill is declining a gift or favor without causing insult. For each situation below, write a refusal using the three-part structure from the chapter: warm gratitude + impersonal external constraint (blame the rule, never the person) + a face-saving alternative. Then mark which words protect the relationship and which locate the obstacle in the rule.

  1. A partner tries to hand you an envelope of cash "for your trouble" at the end of a successful meeting.
  2. A government official offers you an expensive personal gift at the close of a contract negotiation.
  3. A contact asks you to "put in a word" to get his cousin hired at your firm, outside the normal process.

Notice, as you write, how much relationship you can preserve while giving up zero ground on the rule. A good decline costs you nothing legally and can actually deepen trust — because you've shown you're both principled and warm.

Part F — Reflection & Extension

  1. The mirror. The West did not arrive at its anti-bribery rules because Westerners are more virtuous; it arrived there through its own long history of corruption and the harm it caused. Write a page describing a form of legal-but-questionable influence that is normal in your own Western business culture (lobbying, campaign donations, the "revolving door" between regulators and industry, lavish client entertainment, alumni hiring networks) — and how it might look to an outsider who'd been told the West "doesn't do favoritism." What does this do to the temptation to feel superior?
  2. The hardest case. Imagine the expectation really is corrupt and walking away means losing a market you've worked years to enter, with real consequences for your team's jobs. Write honestly about how you'd hold the line anyway — what you'd tell yourself, your team, and your local partner — and what legitimate moves (relationship-building, patience, escalating to people who can change the rules) remain available even then.

✍️ Portfolio Builder. Open your Cultural Intelligence Portfolio and create the section "My Gift-and-Favor Map" (begun in the chapter's Portfolio Prompt). Three required entries: (1) your company's actual gift/hospitality policy in plain words — value cap, official rule, approval process; if you don't know it, write "ACTION: find this," because you cannot navigate this zone blind; (2) the specific gift etiquette for your chosen culture (e.g., for China: both hands, no clocks, no sets of four, decline-then-accept) so you can give well, not just safely; (3) three ready-made decline scripts for situations you can realistically imagine facing. Revisit at Chapter 40: the goal is that none of this is ever improvised under pressure again.