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In this chapter, we introduce a new construct we call “Perceived Deception in Online Consumer Reviews” (PDOCR). Online reviews of products are very important to companies and customers, yet they are vulnerable to unethical representations. Even regardless of whether a deceptive review has been posted or not, we take the position that it is important to understand consumers’ perceptions of deception because it is a consumer’s perception that leads him or her to experience subsequent feelings and opinions and to consider follow-up actions. We draw on the literature and build on the Elaboration Likelihood Model and Cognitive Dissonance Theory to create an overarching framework of antecedents of PDOCR, consequences, and moderators. We also report findings from a sample of in-depth interviews with real consumers about their thoughts on these phenomena and related constructs. We use our framework and theories and the qualitative data to derive Research Questions that we hope will spur future research on these important issues.

Purpose – To analyse the patterns of deception that take place at five different levels of intimacy: fleeting encounters between strangers, performance teams and their audiences, competitive game play between teammates, intimate partners, and individual selfhood.

Approach – Symbolic interactionist and dramaturgical theories are applied alongside Simmel's dialectical model of social relations.

Findings – Symbolic interactionist theories posit that deception can be socially good, regardless of whether it is morally right or wrong, because of its facilitative effects on interaction order. While applicable to the tactful ‘polite fictions’ that characterise some routine encounters in everyday life, this model of pragmatic rationality becomes complicated when we analyse its deployment in more intimate forms of social relationship. Drawing on Simmel's dialectic of fascination and fear, I suggest that the relative influence of these factors shifts as intimacy increases: cautious reserve gives way to trust, excitement and risk taking, experienced through both collusive deception and honesty. This culminates in the Goffmanesque ‘transceiver’, an agent who can take the view of both fraudster and victim simultaneously, viewing the social drama from both perspectives; fear, suspicion and cynicism then paradoxically re-emerge. The consequences of transceivership are explored in relation to self-deception, through the example of academic impostordom.

Originality and value – The paper critically explores the limitations of SI and dramaturgy for understanding more intimate forms of deception, while arguing that Simmelian ideas can be usefully applied to augment the theories and compensate for these effects.

Researchers are continually trying to find reliable fraud indicators (e.g., Beasley, 1996) and some are working on building fraud prediction models (e.g., Spathis, 2002) to aid auditors in fraud detection. With this same goal of predicting fraud in mind, the purpose of this study is to explore the potential of qualitative fraud risk indicators. Content analysis is used in analyzing the Management's Discussion and Analysis (MDA) section of the annual report to identify potential indicators of deception to increase the likelihood of fraud detection in a timelier manner than current quantitative models.

By examining asynchronous communication contained in annual reports for companies required by the SEC to restate their financial statements, patterns of key linguistic characteristics were identified and compared to those used by companies not required to restate. Findings evidence significant differences on several dimensions. Using language cues for detection of deception has the advantage over quantitative methods of providing a more timely method of determining deception. Quantitative models often cannot detect deception until the effects are validated by financial impairment.

Implications of the findings suggest that qualitative methods of deception detection may provide an earlier, and thus more useful, method of the detection of fraud. The results of this study should provide stakeholders with a set of indicators to aid in identifying misstated information. This approach is also one that can be generalized to other written documents used to predict fraudulent communication.

For most of my career I studied the relationship between culture and psychological process, and the implication of such relationships for managerial and other behaviors. That has certainly become an important research area. Since I published my Individualism and Collectivism book (Triandis, 1995), for instance, this topic has become important in the social sciences. For example, the Kitayama and Cohen's (2007) Handbook of Cultural Psychology has many chapters that use some of that work. I assume that the Academy has honored me for that work.

In light of the many crises and catastrophes faced in the modern world, policymakers frequently make claims to be ‘following the science’ or being ‘governed by the data’. Yet, conflict based on inequalities continue to fuel dissatisfaction with the decisions and actions of authorities. Research into public security may require surveillance and covert observations, all of which are subject to major ethical challenges. Any neat distinction between covert and overt research is difficult to maintain given the variety of definitions used for all the terms addressed here. Covert research may be ethically justified and is not necessarily deceptive. In any case, deception may be ethical if engaged in for the ‘right’ reasons. Modern research sites and innovative research methods may enhance opportunities for covert work. In all surveillance and covert work, care must be taken about how consent is managed, how observed subjects are protected and harm to all involved minimised in all situations.

In comparative research across cultures, there is an implicit norm against the evaluation of cultures. Researchers, especially from outside of a culture, tend to restrain from describing the studied culture in negative terms, such as “primitive,” “ineffective,” and “immoral.” This nonjudgmental stance springs partly from the need to be objective and partly from the avoidance of neocolonialist and imperialist impressions.

Economic theory posits a universal sociocultural orientation toward pricing complicated only by systematic cognitive biases. While institutional and organizational theorists have challenged the purported homogeneity of market logics, they have not linked market heterogeneity to price outcomes. If market logics are internally complex with multiple orientations toward pricing, skilled actors should be able to influence prices through market logics. This study utilizes qualitative analysis of interview data with a stratified random sample (75 percent response rate) of key participants to examine how investment banks (underwriters) instantiate a hybrid market logic in the Initial Public Offering (IPO) market. Underwriters exploit their status position to promulgate IPO pricing methods contradicting neoclassical rationality, behavioral models of pricing, and the underwriters’ own calculative mode of behavior. They successfully create this hybrid logic for issuers while hiding the nature of their market power through deceptive use of vocabulary from the market logic itself. Hence, the internal complexity of market logics directly impacts financial prices, with skilled actors achieving superior outcomes. This study concludes with an assessment of the implications for price theory, developing propositions to guide future research on market logics and pricing.

When FECS spins out of human intervention and regulatory control, then it can easily harm and constrain the markets as it happened on Black Friday of October 1929, resulting in the Great Depression, and the September–October 2008 Financial Crisis, when some 17 mega global investment banks ran out of control and lost close to trillion US dollars in market capitalization. This chapter defines, analyzes, classifies, and morally assesses occupational and corporate fraud, corruption and money-laundering, and their other evil forms. When we allow our choices to be driven by passion, choosing thereby to ignore or fail to investigate outcomes, the results are too often flawed and unintended, as the cases of Lehman Brothers, AIG, Freddie Mac, and Fannie May that collapsed around September–October 2008 would attest. While we should condemn abuses within the FECS, one can also seek to understand the origins and originating systems of fraud, corruption, and various forms of deceptions and chicanery, and search for remedial strategies for eradicating these ills of FECS. Several contemporary market cases of fraud, corruption, and bribery will be identified to illustrate the contents of this chapter.

The authors ask whether individuals tasked with persuading others have distinct and important concerns regarding their occupational stress and well-being. The authors argue that a well-known model from the marketing literature – the persuasion knowledge model (PKM; Friestad & Wright, 1994) – illuminates a number of issues for future study. The authors further argue for a number of extensions to the PKM to account for the persuasion agent’s side of the interaction. Next, the authors consider potential stressors that are distinctive to the persuasion encounter, as well as the strategies that persuasion agents engage to cope. This discussion reveals a number of potential negative consequences for the agents themselves, as well as their employing firms and customers. Finally, the authors present some thoughts on what persuasion agents, their managers, and external regulators can do to mitigate these negative consequences.