Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society

Volume 29, 2018

Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting

Hypocrisy, Cynicism, and Non-Limited Altruism Needs

This paper examines definition and interpretation of corporate hypocrisy. There are two different kinds of hypocrisy. One form is objective and universal: a business actor states an ideal or standard and anyone else can see reasonably that the actor’s behavior deviates substantially from this espoused ideal. The other form is subjective and thus is not universal: someone else states an espoused ideal or standard and argues that the business actor’s behavior does not match that prescribed ideal. The paper provides a proposed model in which hypocrisy and cynicism interact in a vicious circle such that both increase. A dimension of this model is that demand (need) for corporate financial altruism is (effectively) unlimited, while the supply (provision) of corporate financial altruism is strictly limited. This imbalance is ripe for generating hypocrisy and cynicism.