Ethics Of Business Bluffing

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There is a lot of debate dealing with the ethics of business bluffing. Some say that the bluffing is ethical and that private life morality does not deal with business concern. Likewise, the ones against business bluffing on the grounds that it is an unethical behavior argue that bluffing amounts to deceiving the consumer or any other party within the business cycle. They also disagree with the proponents of bluffing that business morality is different from private life morality; they suggest that there is not much difference between the two and thus bluffing cannot be justified as ethical. Just like poker, business is largely a game that involves strategic bluffs. Business and private life worlds are completely different and the two thus demand …show more content…

Personal ethics cannot be the in same manner as personal life of the business person.
Bluffing is not lying. Bluffing is deceiving someone to believe that you will do something. Lying is making false statements and being untruthful. For example, a person asks a car salesman for their best price for a certain car, most people would not believe the price quoted to be the actual best price for the car. Instead, the confident buyer of the car will take the price quoted by the salesman as the negotiations starting point. It would therefore be wrong to imply that bluffing is unethical since both the seller and the buyer are positioning them self to maximize their opportunities. The buyer negotiates the price in order to purchase the car at the lowest price possible, while the seller does his best to sell the car at the highest possible price. Therefore, there is no violation of ethical conduct. In the business game, everyone is looking for an opportunity to get the best out of the …show more content…

However, this is a farfetched assumption since it is blatantly wrong to give the impression that business can be equated to an ordinary game. In arguments that support the notion that bluffing is ethical in business, they fail to address and to consider dangers of individuals getting absorbed in the idea of game and thus fail to pursue the true objectives of business. If business is actually a game and not real, then it is possible for the players to act in a manner that eliminates the results of the real world when making important decisions. Such assumptions might have severe consequences and implications on the individuals who have made such assumptions. In bluffing, students might be trained to see business as a model of a game in which they view people as numerical symbols or units of some kind. The moral sensitivities are then attuned to winning only. Such attitudes would in most cases lead to behaviors that are unethical and such decisions would not be in the interest of either the society being served or by the business

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