Deception as Strategy: Context and Dynamics

Abstract

... All warfare is the way (Tao) of deception. Therefore, when capable, feign incapacity; when active, inactivity. When near, make it appear that you are far away; when far away, that you are near. Offer the enemy a bait to lure him; feign disorder and strike him... Sun Tzu. The concept of strategic deception is not new in strategy and can be traced to early writings of Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, and Aristotle, among others. Over time, classic stratagems that had military and political origins have found their way into strategic management concepts. The term strategy is derived from strategos, a Greek term used to describe a military commander during the Hellenistic times that marked the zenith of Greek influence around the Mediterranean region. Bracket (1980) offers meaningful insight into the Greek verb stratego: a plan to destroy one's enemies through effective use of resources. Many terminologies in the corporate environment such as feints and guerilla tactics remind one of the similarities between military strategy and business. This romanticized view of strategy, is evident in the way strategy studies have treated the exploits of Sun Tzu, Hannibal, Machiavelli, and the Normandy invasion, among others. The writings of Sun Tzu are an important reading in many business schools while a whole stream of organizational research is devoted on Machiavelli. Despite the rich anecdotal evidence of strategic deception in business, there are many gaps to be filled by the research. Scholars have hypothesized on different dimensions of strategic deception such as feints, bluffs, gambits, and curveballs (Carr, 1968; McGrath et al., 1998; Hendricks and McAfee, 2006; Stalk, 2006) based on descriptive, game-theoretic or signaling theory. Tiffs paper identifies gaps in the existing knowledge of strategic deception literature, and suggests promising directions for future research. Areas that have not been addressed in the literature include the integration of existing perspectives on deception, evaluating key variables that affect deception and contexts that lead to deception. A contextual framework for deception has been developed. Deception is framed in a context of uncertainty, while the rationale for deception is described from a transaction cost perspective. The paper also highlights the role of strategic leaders as key players in the decision-making process. Ultimately, deception has wider unintended implications that are discussed. Strategic deception refers to strategic actions aimed at misleading rivals from the true strategic intent of the firm or the environment. The extent and nature of deception may vary from simple concealment of trivial information to outright lies and disinformation. Consequently, deceptive strategies may range from perfectly legal competitive strategies to illegal practices of lying to gain an advantage. While the interest here is to examine realistic conditions that lead to strategic deception in competitive environments, the concern in this paper is not to delve into the ethics of deception. Senior corporate executives are responsible for strategic decisions within their firms, including strategic deception. From the strategic leadership literature, key firm executives have significant influence over firm strategies and organizations and the strategies they adapt are a reflection of those executives (Hambrick and Mason, 1984; Boal and Hooijberg, 2000; Finkelstein and Hambrick, 1996). It is these senior corporate executives that make deceptive strategic choices. Consequently, the firm's strategic choices can be better understood by evaluating top executives' behavioral orientations, decision-making processes, and organizational context. CEOs are motivated to make strategic choices on the basis of many variables. Evaluating the context and CEO's behavioral orientations helps shed more light on how deceptive strategies emerge in the decision-making process. The current competitive environment is characterized by uncertainty that has been compounded by the state of the global environment. …

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 25 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.