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PROSA Product Sustainability Assessment
How this could be done is best described with one example. We will look at optical drives
that are used in computers and notebooks (CD and DVD-drives). We will compare two of the
global players producing this type of products with a joint market share of roughly 25%:
1.) Quanta Storage Inc. is a Taiwanese company that shifted its entire production to
mainland China.
2.) Toshiba Information Equipment is Japanese Company that produces its optical drives
in two factories in the Philippines.
As a Taiwanese company, Quanta Storage Inc. gets a bribe payers index value of 3,8 63 . With
its production facilities in China the corruption perception index is 3,2. The Japanese Toshiba
Information Equipment gets a bribe payers index value of 5,3, while its Philippine production
sites yield a corruption perception index value of 2,5.
Both companies produce the same goods, so the sector bribe payers index value is equal
(5,9 for light industry). Now we should also look into existing databases on documented
corruption cases. It turns out that none of the used data sources yields any corruption case in
which the two companies have been involved. The whole arithmetic can also be plotted in a
list.
Tabelle 21
Comparative corruption assessment (quick check).
Company Quanta Storage Inc. Toshiba Information Equipment
Corruption Perception Index 3,2 2,5
Bribe Payers Index (regional) 3,8 5,3
Bribe Payers Index (sector) 5,9 5,9
Sum 12,9 13,7
Business & Human Rights Resource Centre No entry No entry
Ethical Investment Research Service No entry No entry
UNICORN No entry No entry
This means that Quanta Storage Inc. can be attributed with a clearly higher risk of being
willing to pay bribes to government officials. On the other side, Chinese officials demand
fewer bribes than their Philippine colleagues. If we sum up the risk factors, it turns out that
Quanta Storage Inc. yields a slightly higher risk than Toshiba Information Equipment (see
table). Nevertheless the difference seems quite negligible.
63 All Index values range between 0 (worst) and 10 (best)
169