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Bid Shopping Ethical Issues

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a) Bid Shopping: "Bid Shopping" occurs when a general contractor discloses the bid price of one subcontractor (or supplier) to its competitors in an attempt to obtain a lower bid than the one on which the general contractor based its bid to the owner. Is that considered ethical? Can a contractor or an owner expose one company's numbers to obtain a lower bid than the one the general contractor based its bid to the owner? This has been going on for a while, and 90% of construction contractors prefer to not disclose such information, and others see it essential to their survival in the industry. (Raleigh, 2004) The associated General Contractors of America (AGC) calls the practice of bid shopping "abhorrent". As well as, the American Subcontractors Association (ASA) calls these practices "unethical". As this process works to the advantage of the owner, it damages the relationship between the competitors out in the marketplace; it brings profit margins and markups down, and drives companies to explore other markets. All this can create a risk of cutting corners and driving the quality of project down, to a point of …show more content…

This indicates that unethical behavior is far more widespread. Thus, being understanding and predicting who is likely to engage in such behavior will help find ways to eliminate such behaviors from happening. According to a research done by Moore Celia and other authors, they have found that the propensity to morally disengage consistently emerges as a significant predictor of a wide range of organizationally relevant unethical behaviors, explaining additional variance above and beyond many of the major alternative individual difference antecedents, provides compelling evidence that morally disengaged reasoning represents a critical factor in a wide range of unethical workplace

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