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Chapter 2 explores and shows the relations among the concepts of honesty, trust, bluffing, and secrecy in the workplace. In business, as in life, we are often pressured to stray from the truth. Chapter 2 argues for the importance of truthfulness and further argues that truthfulness is essential for business success. Chapter 2 also tries to show when and why good business and truthfulness might seem to be in tension.
The chapter begins with Albert Z. Carr’s famous piece arguing that bluffing in business is often ethical. Carr argues that certain deceptive strategies in business are not only necessary but are in fact desirable, and even morally praiseworthy. He makes a famous (and often attacked) analogy between business and poker. Could an “honest” poker player ever consistently win? Carr asks. “To be a winner, one must play to win,” Carr argues, and that means bluffing and other “small or large deceptions.”
Sissela Bok has written the most influential work on lying and secrecy, and in her piece, she explores the different kinds of secrecy and why secrets are both necessary and dangerous. We must have privacy, she argues, but we should also remember that very little immoral behavior could ever take place without secrecy.
Bluffing and lying aren’t the only forms misrepresentation can take. Harry G. Frankfurt explores the line between those forms of deception and a form of fakery he calls “bullshit.”
In the excerpt from his famous work The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli argues that successful princes need not always keep their word, though they must maintain a reputation for always doing so.
Ekman and Frank explain why some lies succeed and other lies fail.
Solomon and Flores look at the importance of trust in human interaction and why trust is essential in business and many other cooperative human enterprises.
By the close of Chapter 2, you should:
- Understand the concepts of honesty, lying, trust, secrecy, and bluffing
- Formulate several arguments for why trust is valuable in business
- Explain why honesty and truthfulness can be strained in business contexts
Suggested Readings
Richard Clark Cabot. Honesty. New York: Macmillan, 1938.
Thomas Carson. “Second Thoughts about Bluffing.” Business Ethics Quarterly 3, no. 4 (1993).
Stephen L. Carter. “The Insufficiency of Honesty.” Atlantic Monthly 277, no. 2 (February 1996).
John Chancellor. On Telling the Truth in Public. Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, 1982.
Ginger L. Graham. “If You Want Honesty, Break Some Rules.” Harvard Business Review, April 2002.
Robin Marantz Henig. “Looking for the Lie.” New York Times Magazine, February 5, 2006.
Stephen Hess, “Lying (for Journalists) and Lying (for Politicians).” In The Little Book of Campaign Etiquette. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2000.
Anthony Heyes. “Honesty in a Regulatory Context: Good Thing or Bad?” European Economic Review 45, no. 2 (2001).
J. J. C. Smart. Ethics, Persuasion and Truth. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.
Alan Strudler. “Deception Unraveled.” Journal of Philosophy 102, no. 9 (September 2005).
Lionel Trilling. Sincerity and Authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.
D. C. Wyld. “Keeping Secrets.” Marketing Intelligence and Planning 15, no. 4 (September 1997).
Websites
Visit a blog detailing the lies told by those in power at www.lies.com/
Read about “The Five Most Common Lies in Business” at www.fastcompany.com/magazine/10/5lies.html
Find a philosophical analysis of lying at http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/lying/lying_1.shtml
Harvard University’s YouTube channel offers a lecture on Kant’s ethics, focusing on cases of lying. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqzW0eHzDSQ
Read about the importance of trust as a leadership trait at https://www.forbes.com/sites/prudygourguechon/2018/02/20/why-inspiring-trust-and-trusting-others-are-essential-leadership-capacities-within-bounds/#7a3627c53592