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Harmony, Hobbes and Rational Negotiation: A Reply to Dees and Cramton’s “Promoting Honesty in Negotiation”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Abstract:

Dees and Cramton have argued that we should take a deontological stand to make negotiations more ethical (“Promoting Honesty in Negotiation: An Exercise in Practical Ethics” BEQ, Vol. 3, #3). I suggest that their analysis is overdetermined, and that one can, in fact, reach the same conclusions through a Hobbesian approach to negotiation. I suggest that an equally valid way to develop ethical negotiation is through the consequentialist “Harmony Thesis” which posits that moral behavior is coextensive with beneficial results.

Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore as wily as serpents and harmless as doves

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1994

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References

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