I think the problem lands somewhere between “widespread corruption” and “never.”
Salespeople can hit their quotas without kickbacks.
What I do see from time to time is this happening “fully disclosed”’at the very senior level. A CEO of a major database company convinces the board to buy a firm that he has an interest in. A CEO “allows” a company to rent out his property for corporate housing. These are fully disclosed, and therefore considered acceptable.
Salesforce or GitHub selling seats to some random company sure don't.
Large software vendors like Microsoft, Siemens (their software dept), IBM, and more, have routinely bribed all around the world to win government contracts.
It may seem nitpicky and yet I think the context and statistics matter—without it, I think we can fall into very binary discussions of people being corrupt or clean, bad or good.
Exactly. It's easy to search the internet internet for 10+ news stories about just about any bad behavior over the past decade, but that doesn't make it the norm.
Or people who actually know about those things, having worked in/with/studied the various industries, without having "been part of bribery/kickback schemes themselves", and have seen them to be fairly widespread - that's a missing third option.
I added this, because the above comment is still that of the proverbial starry-eyed kid arriving with the bus to L.A. from Nebraska, and paints a false dichotomy that ends up with the same conclusion ("this can't possibly be widespread"):
(a) it's either cynical people (so this isn't widespread, it's just their cynicism that thinks so)
(b) or it's crooks looking to normalize their behavior (so this isn't widespread, it's just isolated "bad-apple" cases justyfing themselves)
Even merely studying different industries, you'll find such scandals (and worse) in some of the biggest companies on Earth, with upper management knowledge and encourangement, collaboration with local governments, cover-up and diplomatic protection from the company's own government, and so on.
Just an example, from one of the biggest companies in the world, with tons of different executives and branches involved, and with different corruption cases all around the world:
https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2011/2011-263.htm
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-lt-latam-siemens-b...
https://www.reuters.com/article/norway-siemens-idUSL13418322...
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/worldbusiness/21...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Greek_bribery_scandal
How about IBM:
https://medium.com/worm-capital/the-ibm-hall-of-shame-a-semi...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-drops-multi-country-bribery...
https://fortune.com/2017/07/27/ibm-poland-investigation/
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-12793255
Microsoft?
https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-to-pay-25m-to-doj-an...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-settlement-idUS...
GE and more:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/17/fbi-targets-johnson-johnson-...
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/whistleb...
https://www.industryweek.com/the-economy/regulations/article...
A general study focusing on past:
"As the 2000s decade progressed, a different breed of corporate scandals began to surface. For example, companies such as ABB Limited, Daimler Chrysler, El Paso Corporation, General Electric, Halliburton, Lee Dynamics, Lucent Technologies, and Siemens AG were found guilty of violating U.S. law and consequently, also rattled shareholders’ trust (Cascini & DelFavero, 2008, p.27). The named businesses were found guilty of committing bribery (...)"
https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...
And we haven't even got into weapons, aviation, construction, and medicine industry bribes (industries which are to bribes what Xerox PARC was for UI innovations!)