Is Business Bluffing Ethical?

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Is Business Bluffing Ethical?

• By Albert Z. Carr

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What is Carrs central claim?

• Businessis a game that demands both special
  strategy and an understanding of its special
  ethics. (p. 60)
• One of these strategies involves calculated lying
  in the form of bluffing.
• These special ethics are different from church
  ethics such as honesty, integrity, and decency.

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Two important definitions.

• Game (n.) (1) An activity providing
  entertainment or amusement a pastime. (2) A
  competitive activity or sport in which players
  contend with each other according to a set of
  rules. The root word means to leap merrily.
• Bluff (vt.) (1) To mislead or seek to mislead a
  person by a false, bold front. (2) In poker, to
  try to mislead other players by betting more on a
  hand than it is worth. The root word means
  either to boast or to baffle.

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Two points about the definitions.

• The fact that an activity is a game does NOT
  determine the acceptable strategies.
• The Game of Science, in which absolute
  truthfulness is needed for long-term success.
• Golf, in which absolute honesty is expected.
• Bluffing is NOT identical with lying.
• Some bluffs are not lies (poker vs. liars
  poker).
• Many business lies cannot be considered bluffs.

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What is Carrs Argument? Part 1

• Falsehood ceases to be falsehood when it is
  understood on all sides that the truth is not
  expected to be spoken. (p. 59)
• Is business a game in which the players do NOT
  expect truth to be spoken anywhere?
• So, where do the rules of the game require
  truth to be spoken?

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What is Carrs argument? Part 2

• Poker and business share a particular brand of
  ethics.
• Poker not only rewards cunning deception (that
  is, bluffing), but it also celebrates it.
• Is this true of business?
• No one thinks the worse of poker players for
  taking advantage of people by bluffing.
• But what of the other examples of taking
  advantage that Carr lists on p. 61?

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But what is Carrs final word?

• He says --
• There ARE rules in business that define right and
  wrong laws, regulations, and court decisions.
• There are strategies in business that are NOT
  prudent to use, at least in the long term ones
  that generate hostility because of their
  deception, unfairness, greed, etc.
• How is this a game in which ethics, that is,
  clear attention to matters of right and wrong, is
  irrelevant?