I was interested to discover that people are instructed on gift giving in
business school and in books on sales and business motivation.  For
instance, the 1984 book titled:  What They Don't Teach You at Harvard
Business School, by M.  McCormack contains the following:

"Business gestures are acts made on behalf or at the request of someone FOR
THE PURPOSE OF OBLIGATING THAT PERSON IN SOME WAY (author's emphasis).  Both
parties may not even be aware of this purpose.  You may like a business
associate and genuinely want to do him or her a favor, but it is the
obligatory nature of the buisness gesture that separates it from a personal
one.  Again, subtlety is crucial.  The more a favor is perceived as "owing
you one" the less effective it will be."

We in the health care and education fields are a profession mostly of women,
who in many ways are uneducated in business, business ethics, and economics.
This tends to make us naive about motives of those who are more profit
oriented.  The fact that those engaged in business are often perfectly nice,
even charming people, shouldn't confuse our perceptions about their
activities while engaged in their profession.

The big problem in health care in the US is that since it has become more of
a business (under insurance controlled managed care) the line is continually
blurred.  I've had family members who benefited from the samples a doctor
got for "free" from drug reps. This was esp. critical at times when there
has not been any insurance coverage available. The docs know there are
people who can't afford the drugs, so they take the freebies.  But this is
just a way to delay looking at the greater social ill:  why is access to
health care tied to income?

Barbara Wilson-Clay BSEd, IBCLC
Austin Lactation Associates
http://www.lactnews.com

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