What is Stealing?

By Terri Morrison
© Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved

Many US citizens generally adhere to an 'absolutist' or 'Manichean' system of ethics — behaviors are divided into right or wrong, good or evil — but standards of appropriate conduct can be totally different outside the US depending upon the circumstances and the people involved. 

When stealing is right
For example, what is stealing?  It can be as clear cut as a shoplifter caught on tape sneaking merchandise out of a store, or as elusive as a CEO deluding stockholders and employees out of billions of dollars of their investments. However, when visitors from other countries try to interpret our laws, the complexities and direct contrasts with their own legal systems can stump even the most highly educated. In many countries, copyright infringement and software piracy are common practices and aren’t associated with the 'sin' of stealing.

One of these situations occurred at the Wharton Export Network of the University of Pennsylvania several years ago. Professor Hans Koehler required a graduate student to write a paper on 'Doing Business with China.' The final report was of such high quality that it made the rounds of several Philadelphia firms. Subsequently, Herr Koehler received an inquiry about the study from an organization in Washington, DC. After describing the research paper, Professor Koehler asked the gentleman if his firm would like a copy. The caller paused for a moment and then responded, 'Actually, I'm the legal counsel here and we wrote it!'

When the Chinese MBA candidate was confronted with the blatant plagiarism, he admitted to it, but seemed puzzled and rather unrepentant. Why? Several explanations are possible (besides the obvious one of ripping off someone else's work to get an A):

1. Confucianism has many precepts one of which is that individuals should share what they create with society. Thus, all research should be made available to benefit society as a whole and authors should be honored to see their work incorporated into other materials.
    
2. In China (and in many parts of Africa) students assume that their teachers are familiar with virtually all major reference works on assigned topics. If a student continually annotates his work with the original sources, it implies that the professor isn’t qualified in his or her field, and insults the professor, which no Chinese student wants to do.

Unwritten codes of conduct
Point #1 gives us some insight into why software piracy is endemic in some Asian countries. Multinational software firms generally seriously evaluate their marketing investments in Asia because the window to sell the original products is so small and the ROI can be minimal. In contrast to the general laissez - faire attitude towards intellectual property rights in China, physically stealing something can result in severe punishment. An event described in Thomas Donaldson's article, Values in Tension: Ethics Away From Home (Harvard Business Review) is eye-opening:

'A manager of a US specialty-products company in China caught an employee stealing. She followed the company's practice and turned the employee over to the provincial authorities, who executed him. Managers cannot operate in another culture without being aware of that culture's attitudes towards ethics.'

In the US, execution is a heinous punishment not handed out for a relatively minor crime, but what happened to the Chinese man was based upon the political, legal and ethical codes in that timeframe and in that province in China. There’s no universally accepted judge of good vs. evil worldwide. 

While there are many explicit laws in the US that prohibit the various categories of stealing (shoplifting, shooting over your season's limit, etc.) the answer to 'What is stealing?' can vary widely from culture to culture. Travelers must not only research the laws of the countries they visit, but develop a sixth sense to abide by the unwritten codes of conduct as well.

Excerpted from OAG Frequent Flyer, May 15, 2002