Is Business Bluffing Ethical?

In “The Death of Honesty,” William Damon raises the concern that current apathy towards increasing dishonesty threatens democracy. In this essay taken from the online volume “Endangered Virtues ” published by the Hoover Institute in 2012, Damon initially concedes that there are situations where lying could be considered acceptable. However, with that being acknowledged, he transitions to his main premise that honesty is losing its importance in society and will lead to its downfall, and he cites examples in politics, law, journalism, and business in contemporary society where dishonesty is expected, and even, condoned. Damon finally directs his remarks pointedly at teachers and current students who accept cheating in schools. To persuade

Sissela Bok’s book, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life examines many aspects of moral and ethical influence, and the effects of lying, on individuals and corporations in various walks of life. Each chapter discusses a specific form that lying can take and describes how it intertwines with daily life. Bok’s arguments are grounded, in comprehensive research, tempered with a philosophical treatment, and rendered through the lens of critical thought. To ensure that readers are able to relate to the material, Bok employs social norming to make each chapter easier to grasp. To do this, each chapter is prefaced with two or three quotes, from a wide variety of sources that provides insight

Red Bull gives you wings, is a world-famous slogan used to sell endless energy in a can. The slogan and advertising campaign of the Red Bull corporation uses many different marketing strategies that utilize weasel words and misleading advertising to increase sales and fool potential customers. In William Lutz’s article, “With These Words I Can Sell You Anything,” readers learn what weasel words are; Lutz explains “Words to appear to be making a claim for a product when in fact they are making no claim at all” (27). The term weasel word is used in the advertising industry because of how weasel eat the eggs of unexpecting animals. New, improved and reformulated are just a few examples of “weasel” words. That companies use to trick the American

The art of deception played a key role in fooling customers. The “ordinary people” at the New York City law firms were bound by an oath to abide a rigorous code of ethics (Callahan 33). Though these lawyers dealt with legal affairs of America’s largest companies, they were faced with not meeting year end billing requirements. In the most desperate cases of being downsized, lawyers turned to padding their hours by simply making up the numbers. They rounded up their hours and added in miscellaneous hours which was described as the “new math” (Callahan 39). “Let me tell you how you will start acting unethically…One

In the past few years, enterprise integrity has come up on a regular subject of conversation. In the past ten years only, we have seen numerous situations associated with collaborative scams which have shaken the people 's trust in businesses and also the general economic climate. A few of the many salient frauds are the WorldCom and Enron 's scams, the ponzi scheme perpetrated by Bernard Madoff 's, the latest accusations of Goldman Sachs tricking option traders to guarantee the company 's personal profit. Incidents such as these designed us all, as upcoming corporation professionals as well as market leaders, think about ethics and its particular function in the commercial world (Gross, 2010.)

When he tells his boss the other employees lie profusely to the boss. These men lied to benefit themselves and weaken their competition. Furthermore, man is born deceiving and prone to lie for self

In his article “Is business bluffing ethical?,” Albert Carr makes a distinction between an “unethical” poker player and a “crook.”

We are introduced to Da’s deceitful ways from the outset, tricking customers in a chit-chat style way to get “clued in” on how

In chapter 1, Levitt and Dubner describe how many people in different cultures and walks of life, which are otherwise inclined to be honest, find subtle ways of cheating to advance their position or increase monetary awards when incentives are strong enough. The authors define an incentive as “a means of urging people to do more of a good thing or less of a bad thing,” and identify three varieties of incentives. Economic incentives are those, which a person responds to in the marketplace. Social incentives motivate people to respond in a certain way because they care or are worried about how they will be viewed by others. Moral incentives appeal to a person’s sense of right versus wrong. Three case studies of the

Puffery enhances the information a company deems necessary and equips the good or service with a certain power that encourages the consumer. Arrington knows most consumers will not consider all factors and “[if] we require that the desire or choice be the product of an awareness of all the facts about the product, then surely every one of us is always moved by irrational desires and makes nothing but irrational choices” (Arrington 610). When one chooses to bluff and “takes an advertised product to offer a subjective effect and the product does not, it is unlikely that it will be purchased again” (Arrington 611). Bluffing is a motive to gain speed in a business setting and not aid the consumer. When a product uses puffery and fails, it simply removes itself from the market, without

Is bluffing in business ethical? I feel that the answer to this question will differ depending on who you ask. If you ask an executive in a major company a question of that sort, they might say that from time to time you have to be deceitful in order to keep the company or business afloat and running properly. That means if you have to deceive the customer, dealer, labor union, or other departments in your organization when negotiating with any of them then it will all be for a good cause. As Albert Carr states, bluffing in business is a “game” and you have to treat it as such in order to thrive. I am not going to be naïve when talking about this matter. Because I know that if most managers, CEO’s, and supervisors did not bluff every now and then, that most opportunities would be missed and the company most likely would lose some sort of competitive edge in the business world. This “game” is played from the bottom levels of corporate America all the way to the top. I do not think that bluffing in business is ethical; however I understand that it is inevitable in a society that bluffs all the time in any given situation. Most people compare this concept of bluffing to that used in the game of poker. In poker, the winner is the person who has the steady skills in the long run. You have to know every aspect of the rules, be aware of the mindsets and psychology of the people you’re playing with, be disciplined, and respond almost automatically to the opportunities that are

“For seven years the Ford Motor Company sold cars in which it knew hundreds of people would needlessly burn to death.”

He repeatably argues that both values can assure maximum protection to both his legal and economic status. In a sense of humanity, Belfort's statement is partially acknowledgeable, however some will controvert that this misleading statement was noted to circumvent his own deceiving personal qualities of amorality. Furthermore, Belfort manipulative literacy techniques evidently reveals his true amorality; insofar, through a dozen or few pages in, Jordan Belfort mentions a language technique named 'straight line persuasion' which is a term for manipulating a buyer's decision on concluding an illegal, non-profitable stock purchase via strong use of his trust and loyalty. Through just one technique he apply's whilst pitching a stock, Belfort gains full control of the vessel and gains full misleading loyalty and trust from his own stock buyers. Expressing Belfort's misleading marketing technique, this upcoming quote will further exemplify his act of perdition, "a highly trained Strattonite, a highly trained killer who won’t take no for an answer, who won’t hang up the phone until his client either buys or dies”. As evidently noted through one prime quote, Belfort arguably gains his trust and loyalty through countless unconscionable acts offending the SEC, FBI, the stock market as well as his unknown stock buyers who all initially earned his trust and loyalty. In addition to the quote, Belfort expresses core values through ambitious language and determination to his so called 'strattonites', training next generation America to be complete fraudsters. Driving my point home, Jordan Belfort is considered by a widespread of citizens as self-beneficial failure corresponding to his moral. Seen through literacy techniques, quotes and

Unethical marketing behaviors will cause legal troubles and a bad reputation. Here are some practices of unethical marketing, in which all should be avoided. First, Exploitation, which is using scare tactics or hard sells against vulnerable consumers. Second, Spamming which is the flooding a customer’s voicemail, mailbox, email or any other means of communication with unwanted messages. Third, bad mouthing the competition is talking down on values and benefits of your competion’s product or service . (Hunt, S. D., Chonko, L. B., & Wilcox, J. B., 1984) Forth, Misleading Advertisement and Information, which is any exaggerated claim or dishonest promise which will cause the customers to mistrust companies and spread that the product a failure.

Businesses have been relatively passive in investigate their in marketing ethics and are still operating according to traditional business models and process that do not reflect consumer interests and ethical implications of their activity often continue afterthought and are yet to be thoroughly incorporated into management decision-making. The contingency framework can accelerate this pre-emptive approach to ethical decision-making. To embed ethics into firms planning and strategy formulation process , marketers should learn from consumers ethical evaluation of their marketing techniques (Smith and Cooper-Martin 1997). An “ethical execution of the marketing program. In addition to financial , market, and competitive objectives, marketers should include consumer concerns and ethical integrity as important criteria for management decision making . Furthermore, ethics must be matched throughout the marketing planning process from product development, market selection , advertising and promotion execution.