Lying in business: insights from Hannah Arendt's ‘Lying in Politics’

Business Ethics 20 (4):359-374 (2011)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The political philosopher Hannah Arendt develops several arguments regarding why truthfulness cannot be counted among the political virtues. This article shows that similar arguments apply to lying in business. Based on Hannah Arendt's theory, we distinguish five reasons why lying is a structural temptation to businessmen: business is about action to change the world and therefore businessmen need the capacity to deny current reality; commerce requires successful image-making and liars have the advantage to come up with plausible stories; business communication is more often about opinions than about facts, giving leeway to ignore uncomfortable signals; business increasingly makes use of plans and models, but these techniques foster inflexibility in acknowledging the real facts; and businessmen easily fall prey to self-deception, because one needs to act as if the vision already materializes. The theory is illustrated by a case study of Landis, which grew from a relatively insignificant organization into a large one within a short period of time, but ended with outright lies and bankruptcy.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Lying in business: insights from Hannah Arendt's 'Lying in Politics'.Piet Eenkhoorn & Johan J. Graafland - 2011 - Business Ethics, the Environment and Responsibility 20 (4):359-374.
Lying in business: insights from Hannah Arendt's ‘Lying in Politics’.Johan J. Graafland Piet Eenkhoorn - 2011 - Business Ethics, the Environment and Responsibility 20 (4):359-374.
Mr. pinocchio goes to Washington: Lying in politics.Robert Weissberg - 2004 - Social Philosophy and Policy 21 (1):167-201.
Lying and history.Cathy Caruth - 2010 - In Roger Berkowitz (ed.), Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics. New York: Fordham University Press.
Lying.James Edwin Mahon - 2006 - In D. Borchert (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Macmillan Reference. pp. 2--618.
Lying, Belief, and Knowledge.Matthew A. Benton - 2018 - In Jörg Meibauer (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Lying. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford Handbooks. pp. 120-133.
Lying, liars and language.David Simpson - 1992 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52 (3):623-639.
The definition of lying.Thomas L. Carson - 2006 - Noûs 40 (2):284–306.
Looking for an honest man.Bryan Garsten - 2011 - Modern Intellectual History 8 (3):697-708.
Respectful Lying.Alan Strudler - 2016 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (4):961-972.

Analytics

Added to PP
2016-02-04

Downloads
14 (#846,877)

6 months
2 (#670,035)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

J. J. Graafland
Tilburg University

References found in this work

Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy.Bernard Williams - 2002 - Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Without alibi.Jacques Derrida - 2002 - Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Edited by Peggy Kamuf.
Social Reporting and New Governance Regulation.David Hess - 2007 - Business Ethics Quarterly 17 (3):453-476.

View all 20 references / Add more references