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Is Business Bluffing Ethical?

Is Business Bluffing Ethical?. By Albert Z. Carr. What is Carr’s central claim?. “Business…is 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.

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Is Business Bluffing Ethical?

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  1. Is Business Bluffing Ethical? By Albert Z. Carr

  2. What is Carr’s central claim? • “Business…is 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.

  3. 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.]

  4. 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.

  5. What is Carr’s 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?

  6. What is Carr’s 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?

  7. But what is Carr’s 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?

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