 ‘Doing Business After the Fall: The Virtue of Moral Hypocrisy’C. Batson (), Elizabeth Collins and Adam Powell Journal of Business Ethics, 2006, vol. 66, issue 4, 335 pages Abstract: Moral hypocrisy is motivation to appear moral yet, if possible, avoid the cost of actually being moral. In business, moral hypocrisy allows one to engender trust, solve the commitment problem, and still relentlessly pursue personal gain. Indicating the power of this motive, research has provided clear and consistent evidence that, given the opportunity, many people act to appear fair (e.g., they flip a coin to distribute resources between themselves and another person) without actually being fair (they accept the flip only if it favors themselves). New evidence also indicates the power of moral hypocrisy in a situation more obviously relevant to business, resource allocation when one party has information about relative resource value that the other does not. Characteristics of modern business situations likely to encourage moral hypocrisy are outlined. We conclude that moral hypocrisy is not only a pragmatic virtue in modern business but is also fast becoming a prescriptive one. Copyright Springer 2006 Keywords: moral hypocrisy; moral integrity; trust; reputation; commitment problem (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:66:y:2006:i:4:p:321-335 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1007/s10551-006-0011-8 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer |
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