Today in my International Business class (usually 120 minutes of pure, distilled boredom, but this particular class was rather interesting) the discussion revolved around the relative ease of starting and/or operating a business in different countries, and how you, as an international entrepreneur, might use indicators of transparency and ease of doing business to gauge any potential market before you actually jump in. So everyone was getting all sophisticated with cliche-ridden business lingo and citing outdated cases, when a student who usually spends most of class time almost sleeping came up with this “theory”: He basically said that when doing business in Third World countires, you should be looking for places where there is direct parallel correlation between the two above mentioned indicies. In other words, ideally you’d like to do business in countries which are high on both indicies (i.e. little or no corruption and a low level of bureaucracy), but you can still do business in countries with a high level of corruption and a high level of bureaucracy, since a little greasing of the palms will help get things rolling. However, should your business be cornered somewhere that scores high on one and low on the other will basically screw you. That is, in a low-corruption high bureaucracy country, that frozen fish shipment of yours will rot in its containers at the destination port while waiting for the agonizing customs clearance, and you can’t use bribes to get things done, thus your operations will eventually go belly up.

I thought this observation was funny and actually kind of true. Of course this guy was thinking on the assumption that business ethics are a constant.