Lies, defeasibility and morality-in-action: The interactional architecture of false claims in sales, telemarketing and debt collection work

Abstract

Lying is known to be endemic in a range of business settings. However, to date studies have not analysed how lies surface, and are spontaneously managed, in 'real time' interaction.Drawing on video and audio recordings, in this paper we analyse how actors account for false claims produced in different settings, namely sales, telemarketing and debt collection.Drawing on resources from ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, lies are conceptualised as products of interactional organization, rather than, say, products of the mind or motives of social actors. Our analysis reveals the centrality of 'epistemics' for understanding how people handle, and seek to neutralise, the moral risks associated with false claims. Potential accusations of 'lying' are shown to be defeasible in light of claims that the speaker has 'discovered', 'noticed' or 'remembered' some pertinent detail. We recover practices through which false claims are transformed, with varying degrees of success, from nefarious to innocent accountings. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for wider questions about the reproduction of work cultures that rely upon deceit.Lying is 'woven into the daily fabric of business life' (Grover, 2005: 149; see also Grover, 1995; Ashforth and Anand, 2003; Hansen et al., 2006;Shalvi et al., 2011;Brannan, 2017; Jenkins and Delbridge, 2016). Many recent corporate scandals have revealed institutionalized systems of deceit (Markham, 2006;Rhodes, 2016). However, few studies have analyzed how lies are subsumed into mundane everyday work activity. 'Whistle blowing ' and 'cover-ups' are predominantly associated with large-scale corporate scandals (Munro, 2016;Weiskopf & Willmott, 2013). This association persists even though corporate scandals such as Enron (Markham, 2006) and the VW emissions case (Rhodes, 2016) show deceit to be an everyday activity that is 'seen but unnoticed' (Garfinkel, 1967). This paper is one of the first naturalistic studies to supply an account of everyday deceit, whistle-blowing and cover-up, revealing a repertoire of practices through which actors handle the moral accountability of 'lies' in ways that manage blame and responsibility.Our use of inverted commas around the term 'lies' is an important aspect of the ethnomethodological approach we take in this paper. Ethnomethodology is a distinct paradigm of enquiry in social science (Button, 1991) that does not provide second-order social scientific theory of how social structure is generated but instead studies how members of society, as 'folk sociologists' (Wieder, 1974) or 'practical sociologists' (Benson & Hughes, 1983), use their own common-sense knowledge of social structures to constitute the social world through their interactions. We use the term 'morality-in-action' (Danby & Emmison, 2014) to refer to this ethnomethodological concern with how matters of morality are oriented to and handled in everyday interaction. As Danby and Emmison (2014) argue, in everyday life we routinely infer and invoke moral versions of our...

In the eye of the beholder: A configurational exploration of perceived deceptive supplier behavior in negotiations

“…Deception incidents are critical, and thus, “subjects usually have good recall” (Chell, 2004, p. 47) of the negotiations. Nevertheless, studying deception in negotiations using an ethnographic approach would be a worthwhile next step, recognizing that it would require similar care because of the potential influence of social desirability (Llewellyn & Whittle, 2019; Lumineau & Oliveira, 2020).…”

‘Do I have to say I’m gay?’: Using a video booth for public visibility and impact

“…Although video outputs are sometimes made available at community screening events and conferences (see for example (Flicker and MacEntee, 2020) and participants from time to time identified (see for example Lomax and Fink, 2010), videos produced for research purposes in work and organisation studies are rarely made available to the public (e.g. Best and Hindmarsh, 2019; Jarzabkowski et al, 2015; Llewellyn and Whittle, 2019; Whiting et al, 2018; Zundel et al, 2018). At best, a small number of still video shots are published in research articles (Zundel et al, 2018), mostly with blurred faces of individuals (Best and Hindmarsh, 2019; Jarzabkowski et al, 2015; Llewellyn and Whittle, 2019).…”

“…Best and Hindmarsh, 2019; Jarzabkowski et al, 2015; Llewellyn and Whittle, 2019; Whiting et al, 2018; Zundel et al, 2018). At best, a small number of still video shots are published in research articles (Zundel et al, 2018), mostly with blurred faces of individuals (Best and Hindmarsh, 2019; Jarzabkowski et al, 2015; Llewellyn and Whittle, 2019). At the back of a major funded research project into LGBT+ employee networks involving 9 case studies and two online surveys, we developed a research tool, hereafter referred to as the video booth , with the view to provide a platform for voices to be heard by wider audiences and to further develop our understanding of LGBT+ identifying staff and their allies.…”