Business and Game-Playing:
The False Analogy
ABSTRACT. A number of business writers have
argued that business is a game and, like a game, pos-
sesses its own special rules for acting. While we do
not normally tolerate deceit, bluffmg is not merely
acceptable but also expected within the game of
poker. Similarly, lies of omission, overstatements,
puffery and bluffs are morally acceptable within
business because it, like a game, has a special ethic
which permits these normally immoral practices.
Although critics of this reasoning have used deonto-
logical and utilitarian arguments to show that deceit
in business is just an immoral as it is in any other
realm of human practice, little attention has been paid
to the fact that the argument is one of analogy. The
analogical argument for business' special ethic is only
as strong as the alleged similarities between business
and game-playing. This paper argues that this analogy
is quite weak and incapable of either providing much
insight into business or of offering a reason to think
that the ethics of business are, or even could be, like
those of a game.
KEYWORDS: analogy, business, Carr, ethics, games
A number of business writers have argued that
business is a game and, like a game, possesses its
own special rules for acting. While we do not
normally tolerate deceit, bluffmg is not merely
acceptable but also expected within the game of
poker. Similarly, lies of omission, overstatements,
Daryl Koehn writes and consults in the fields of business
and professional ethics. She is the author of the book
The Ground of Professional Ethics (Routledge,
1994) and of numerous other articles on ethics. In
addition, she serves as the editor of the Online Journal
of Ethics (lutp: / /www.depaul.edu/ethics /) and as Go-
Director of the Institute of Business and Professional
Ethics at DePaul University.
Journal of Business Ethia 16: 1447-1452, 1997.
© 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
Daryl Koehn
puffery and bluffs are morally acceptable within
business because it, like a game, has a special
ethic which permits these normally immoral
practices (Carr, 1968). Although critics of this
reasoning have used deontological and utilitarian
arguments (Bowie, 1993) to show that deceit in
business is just an immoral as it is in any other
realm of human practice, little attention has been
paid to the fact that the argument is one of
analogy. This oversight is unfortunate, given the
strong intuitive appeal Carr's argument has to
both business persons and to commerce students.
This paper aims to redress this oversight by
critically scrutinizing the form, as well as the
content, of Carr's argument. The analogical
argument for business' special ethic is only as
strong as the alleged similarities between business
and game-playing. In this paper, I will show that
this analogy is quite weak and incapable of either
providing much insight into business or of
offering a reason to think that the ethics of
business are, or even could be, like those of a
game. I will also show in passing that we might
draw very different conclusions about the right
way to act if business is analogized to other
playful activities (e.g., a co-operative group
treasure hunt) instead of poker. To make my
argument, I will describe characteristic traits of
a game and consider trait-by-trait whether
business shares these features.
Trait One: A game is played to win
All competitive sports and many games are played
to win. Of course, both have a social dimension.
But the player who does not at least try to play
well and to beat her opponents will likely not
[237]
1448 Daryl Koehn
be much in demand as a golf or bridge partner.
Where there are winners there are also losers.
Business, however, is not an activity in which
one player - management - wins while the other
players - custotners, employees, suppliers - lose.
While some corporations no doubt have an "us
versus them" mentality, many routinely aim at
"win-win" situations. They do so because they
know they cannot stay in business if they aim at
defeating those with whom they interact. True,
businesses do compete with one another. But
their individual survival requires that they try to
prosper by accustoming their customers to pre-
dictably satisfactory service and products so that
these customers will buy from them again. (The
word "customer" derives from the verb "to
accustom"). Business managers also need the co-
operation of their employees. If the employees
come to feel that they have lost at the game of
business, they may simply refuse to provide a
consistent supply of productive work. And once
again the company will have trouble prospering.
The recent emphasis on quality management
has highlighted the extent to which the good will
of a company's customers, employees, and sup-
pliers is a fragile business asset not easily regained
once squandered. Yet the business-game analogy
places this asset at great risk. Viewing business
as a game like poker commits management to
seeing its customers, employees, and suppliers as
people over whom to score a triumph. While
friends who lose at poker usually continue to
show up at the weekly gatne because they enjoy
one another's company in general, customers and
suppliers are not management's friends. They are
not bound by any ties of friendship to continue
to play in management's "game" having been
once burned. In business, unlike in a game,
human relations are likely to be permanently
fractured if one or the other party loses.
If business is like any game, it seems more like
the team sports of basketball or volleyball where
the players have incentives to co-operate with
one another and to develop, rather than destroy,
trust. Better still, one might compare business
practice to a playful activity like a group treasure
hunt or a sailing voyage in which the sailors are
trying to set a new world record. This latter
analogy focuses our attention not only the co-
[238]
operative aspects of business practice but also
upon ways in which co-operation may generate
more ideas and better cotnmunication than com-
petition and lead to a more profitable business
in the long run.
Trait Two: In games, losers suffer few
consequences
The losses suffered by those who are outplayed
in a game are rarely life-devastating. Players know
that losing is part of playing the game. Boris
Becker lost his share of games as a youngster and
will lose to ever younger players as he ages and
loses agility. Playing a game entails both striving
to excel while at the same time learning to lose
graciously. The proof that losses in games are not
generally severe is that as the danger an activity
poses to life increases, the less likely we are to
treat this activity as a game. Russian roulette is
a game only in the eyes of a masochist. And
poker players who gamble away the money
necessary for their health insurance and for
feeding their children are more addicts than
participants in a game.
By contrast, the stakes in business are consis-
tently very high. If a company tries to deviously
one-up the competition by rolling out a new
product before it has been thoroughly tested, the
product may fail. If it does, employees may lose
their jobs and health insurance. The community
which is home to this corporation will be hard
hit if the manufacturing plant closes. Local gov-
ernment tax revenues will likely fall as a result
of this business' misjudged blufF, crippling gov-
ernment's ability to initiate and sustain programs
in the general public interest. Even "winning"
corporations who gain market share through
their successful deceits and bluffs may fmd them-
selves very big losers as the larger community's
economy reels from the consequences of the bad
gambles made by other businesses. In business,
unlike in games, there is no "winner-take-all,"
if indeed there are even "winners" in any con-
ventional sense of the word.
 Business and Game-Playing: The False Analogy
Trait Three: A game is constituted by
certain rules
Games do not simply use rules to regulate the
actions of players. The rules themselves by and
large define the practice. There is no point in a
baseball batter arguing that he should be allowed
fifteen missed swings at the plate. In baseball,
after three missed swings, he is out. If one asks
why this is so, the answer simply is: That's the
rule in baseball. The player who demands fifteen
strikes before retiring from the plate is neither
playing baseball nor playing it well. Rules also
obviously constitute the various card games.
Hearts are always trump in the game of hearts
but not in bridge because the rules of each game
make it so. While business practice does recog-
nize some conventions, it is far from being
constituted by a set of rules. For example, foreign
exchange traders typically employ conventions
for hand signals and for quoting prices. They also
extend one another certain courtesies. A trader
generally does not wait until the very end of the
trading day to try to unload millions of Swiss
francs in the local market. Nevertheless, indi-
vidual traders can and do evolve their own
private guidelines for how and when they will
establish positions, with whom they will trade,
whether they will trade one currency only
against the dollar or do a cross-trade against
another foreign currency. There are few explicit
rules in business. And what rules there are
function as guidelines. So, although a trading
firm will likely have a rule limiting the size of a
position a trader may assume or carry overnight,
exceptions can be and are made to this "rule".
Business practice is not, therefore, constituted by
a set of rules; and it is of little help to suggest,
as Carr does, that the businesspeople, like poker
players, can do whatever it takes to win as long
as they stay within the rules, given that business
lacks the rules poker has.
Trait Four: The rules of the game are fixed
In card games and sports, rules are promulgated
in advance of playing the game. They are publicly
known, and anyone who wishes to play a
1449
particular game must abide by the rules.
Occasionally the rules are changed by commis-
sioners or tournament officials. Proposed rule
revisions are discussed and, if accepted, are made
known. But the rules do not evolve in and
through the playing of the game. I cannot start
slapping the ten in slapjack and expect my fellow
players to allow me to get away with this
innovation. Yet, in business, people try new
practices all the time, hoping that their changes
will improve sales or communication with
customers or with employees; alter the product
in some desirable way; or make for more efficient
production. This kind of evolving approach is not
merely tolerated; it is an expected and necessary
part of working with suppliers, employees and
the larger community to deliver quality goods
to customers and to earn a satisfactory return on
shareholder investment. So even if there were a
business rule that one could deceive competitors
or customers, there would be no reason why this
rule could not change tomorrow if business
practitioners started to trust rather than deceive
one another. One is not entitled, therefore, to
speak as though business is a settled practice of
one-upsmanship involving deceit and misrepre-
sentation.
Trait Five: Rules of the game are
accepted by all who play the game
All adults who play a game tacitly agree to play
by the rules. Moreover, they know they are party
to such an agreement. Such knowledge explains
why poker players do not complain when they
lose a hand to someone who is bluffing. Bluffing
is a part of the game and a strategy that all poker
players have admitted as permissible. Similarly,
outright lying is permitted in the children's game
of "I doubt it" because all players comprehend
that the game's rules require that players lie.
Bluffing and lying in business, though, are
problematic in part because all parties to the
transaction have not agreed to using deceit and
misrepresentation in the conduct of exchange.
The young first-time car buyer with his heart
set on a particular car; or the Amish merchant
who is scrupulously honest with his customers
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1450 Daryl Koehn
about the ripeness, age, and origin of the fruit
he sells is not going to assume that the used car
salesman's "fmal" price is anything but the final
price. Nor do all corporate employees understand
the deceit connected with "voluntary" giving
to the Crusade of Mercy or United Way. The
corporate representative who collects donations
generally fails to mention that employees who do
not give and make the corporation look good
will never advance in management ranks. Some
employees catch onto the unspoken message. But
others never do.
These cases suggest that the deceit or manip-
ulative bluff cannot be excused on the ground
that it has caused no harm because all parties
know that the salesperson or corporate repre-
sentative is engaged in a form of deceit. Everyone
knows no such thing. Consequently, the analogy
between business and a game with its own special
ethic is really a variant of the fallacy of assuming
the consequent: That all parties to a business
exchange have agreed to deceit-allowing rules
is exactly what must be shown, rather than
presupposed. And establishing this fact will be
difficult since it is far from clear that business
even has formal fixed rules, much less rules to
which all players have agreed to adhere.
Trait Six: Players act intermittently
People play games for recreation. Recreation
occupies only a portion of human beings' lives.
Working, rearing children, helping friends, and
discharging civic duties take up much of our
time. Even professional athletes do not play
competitively during the off-season, spending
this time with their families or on other life
projects. Business, though, generally goes on
throughout the year. Managers and employees
often fmd it hard to take a vacation because of
the press of things to be done. Leaves of absence
are still more difficult to obtain. Corporate
employees may not want to work for some
period, yet businesses (e.g., banking, or food and
medical supply distribution) must go on because
people's lives depend upon them. The continuing
existence and activity of a corporation matters
greatly. So it is hardly surprising that a fair
[2401
amount of a firm's time is devoted to selecting
and training successors to senior management.
Here again the analogy between business and
games breaks down. Bobby Fischer did not have
to train the next grandmaster. If the game of
chess or poker were to disappear from the world
scene, life would go on with little disruption. Life
will also continue if Sears or General Motors
ceases to exist as a result of bad business
decisions. But the dislocation will be severe. The
work of business is not play. It is an essentially
pubhc activity that must go on if societal
functioning is not to be impeded. Comparing
business to games like poker irresponsibly trivi-
alizes the importance of business and obscures
just what is at stake for those who participate in
it and are affected by it.
Trait Seven: In games the scope
for bluffing is quite narrow and
well-understood
Although, in a game such as poker, participants
may be dealt quite a large number of different
hands, when it comes to bluffing, a player's
options are pretty limited. She may pretend
either to hold better or worst cards than she in
fact has. However, when a person begins to bluff
in business, the possibilities are as limitless as
human creativity. And precisely because bluffing
or misrepresentation can take so many unpre-
dictable forms in business, it is a dangerous
course on which to embark. It can lead both the
business and other parties into uncharted waters.
For example, as a way of raising the stakes during
a dispute with a government agency such as the
IRS, a bank might threaten to block a pending
loan to one of the former Soviet bloc countries.
The action might be legal and thus would qualify
as within the supposed "rules" of the business
game. It might even lead others in government
to pressure the IRS to back down. Yet it might
also permanently harm relations between the
U.S. government and the fledgling republic that
desperately needs the loans and is terribly
nervous about any sign that the money might fail
to materialize. If the republic has a nuclear
arsenal, the bank's "bluff" might even rekindle
 Business and Game-Playing: The False Analogy
the arms race. The example is somewhat
extreme, but the basic point is not farfetched:
Overstatements, deceits and bluffs by business
may have far-reaching ramifications for both
domestic and foreign policy in a world in which
business greatly influences the conduct of each.
Poker is played in smoke-filled back rooms.
Business acts on the world stage. It is irrespon-
sible, consequently, to suggest that a business
corporation is entitled to bluff its way through
its interactions with other parties whenever it
thinks it might stand to gain a short-term profit
or forestall some loss and to do so without any
consideration of the long-term and short-term
effects of this bluff upon other parties and upon
the nation which allows this same corporation to
exist in the first place.
Trait Eight: Players in a game risk only
what is theirs to risk
When people play sports, they risk injuring their
bodies; in the case of betting games, people
hazard their money. In both cases, what players
risk belongs to them. In business, however, if
management were borrow against a firm's assets
as part of a bluff to convince a competitor that
it was planning a major acquisition, the manager
would be jeopardizing assets which are not his or
hers. The company is owned by the shareholders
who have supplied the equity against which the
firm has borrowed. This equity is the share-
holders', not management's. Moreover, manage-
ment's "bluff" may also create a lien on the assets
necessary to fund the firm's pension obligations,
money on which the employees have a claim.
Irrespective of whether the bluff accomplishes its
intent of, say, frightening a competitor into a
costly, precipitate countermove, the fact remains
that neither the shareholders nor the employers
have authorized the manager to gamble with
their money. Given that no ordinary citizen is
morally entitled to speculate with funds
belonging to someone else, it is hard to see how
business management could be so justified.
1451
Trait Nine: In a game, it is clear to
w^hom any gain belongs
Implicit in the analogy between a game and
business is the notion of an agent who develops
and executes strategy. Any gains accruing as a
result of the game plan belong to the strategizing
agent. Losses, too, must be covered by this same
agent. If one is going to argue that businesses
are entitled to bluff or to shade the truth, then
one must be clear about just who is doing this
bluffing. The person of a corporation is a legal
fiction that does not initiate actions or at least
does not do so in any simple sense. Presumably,
then, business managers are the persons who are
allegedly entitled to feint, trumpet the products
in overstated ways, etc. But if business managers
are allowed to engage in such maneuvers, there
is no reason why, qua gamesters, they cannot
execute these strategies in such a way as to
maximize their own personal gains. One can well
imagine a CEO who intentionally manages
matters in such a way that he will be let go from
the firm with a golden parachute package far
more lucrative than his current salary. The firm
may have been driven into the ground under his
management. But if corporate ethics are those
of the game, the manager is a good player who
has played consummately well, availing himself
of every legal opportunity to haul in the biggest
pot. The problem, of course, is that firms will
find it close to impossible to exist if management
ceases to consider the larger corporate interest
but ponders only how to increase its own income
and wealth.
Conclusion
Since business shares few, if any, of the charac-
teristic features of card games or of competitive
sports, the assertion that business is like a game
and exhibits the ethics of a game is simply that
— an assertion not backed by much in the way
of argument. Those who would argue for a
special business game ethic would do well to
consider the types of arguments medical and legal
ethicists have offered in defense of special
professional ethics. Defenders of a medical ethic.
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1452 Daryl Koehn
for example, have understood that they must not
only assert the existence of a special ethic but
must also account for why actions in accordance
with these special ethics are morally permissible
(Kass, 1985). Thus, medical ethicists defend the
physician practice of protecting patient confi-
dence not by an analogy to' the lawyer's practice
of keeping client confidences but rather on
deontological or utilitarian grounds. Patient
confidentiality is justified on the ground that it
preserves the trust necessary for patients to be
healed or that it respects patient autonomy by
allowing the patient control over the extent to
which his or her history is made public.
Those who assert that business has the ethics
of the game have offered no such arguments in
support of the morality of the business ethic. On
the one hand, their unstated reasoning appears to
be that since business is a game and since the
rules of the game simply are the rules, little else
needs to be or can be said about the rightness of
business action. This reasoning fails to persuade
because the above analysis has shown that
business bears almost no resemblance to a game
understood as a rule-constituted low-risk private
practice voluntarily engaged in by parties all of
whom know and who have assented to the rules
and who risk only what is theirs to risk. On the
other hand, the argument may be that business
bluffing and misrepresentation are morally per-
missible because, although such practices are
normally harmful, business players know that
these deceits are tolerated and can therefore
protect themselves from harm. But this line of
argument is not promising either. Knowing that
people in my neighborhood randomly fire their
guns on New Year's Eve, I am able to take
[242]
measures to avoid being shot. But it does not
follow that it is right for drunk people to fire
blindly into the night. Moreover, since many of
the people hurt by a business bluff gone bad do
not know of such practices or are in no position
to avoid the evil consequences of them, the
conceit that business is no more than a poker
game writ large cannot be sustained. Rather than
continuing to speak of business as a game, we
would be better served if we abandoned entirely
the business-game analogy and focussed instead
on the practical implications of the genuinely
special features of business practice, features such
as its corporate structure and dependence on
many parties' co-operation, its longstanding part-
nership with government, and its capacity to
greatly affect domestic and foreign policy.
References
Bowie, Norman E.: 1993, 'Does It Pay to Bluff in
Business?', in Tom L. Beauchamp and Norman E.
Bowie (eds.). Ethical Theory and Business (Prentice
Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ), pp. 460-462.
Carr, Albert Z.: 1968, 'Is Business BlufFing Ethical?',
reprinted in Tom L. Beauchamp and Norman E.
Bowie (eds.). Ethical Theory and Business (Prentice
Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ), pp. 449-454.
Kass, Leon R.: 1985, Toward a More Natural Science:
Biology and Human Affairs (The Free Press, New
York, NY), pp. 157-246.
Philosophy Department,
DePaul University,
6604 N. Bosworth Avenue,
Chicago, IL 60626,
U.S.A.