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Lying about Reservation Prices in Business Negotiation: A Qualified Defense

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2023

Alan Strudler
Alan Strudler*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania, USA
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Abstract

This essay offers a philosophical defense of deception about reservation prices in business negotiation. Its discussion is prompted by arguments that Charles N.C. Sherwood makes in a recent issue of Business Ethics Quarterly and develops ideas I put forward in an earlier issue of Business Ethics Quarterly. The essay argues that although reservation price deception cannot be justified by appeal to the consent of negotiating parties, it can be justified by appeal to a separate but related notion, assumption of risk, as long as the assumption of risk occurs in a suitably fair context.

Keywords

negotiationdeceptionconsentfairness
Type
Commentary
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , October 2023 , pp. 763 - 776
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Business Ethics

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Footnotes

This article has been updated since its original publication. Please see DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2023.21.

References

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