Trading Floor Case Study

If Linda didn’t lie to the client, I would partially agree with her bluffing strategy in dealing the case. The main reason is that providing consulting services (of finance, management, investment or real estate development) is very different from selling a product. The intellectual inputs and potential outcomes are normally immeasurable, and vary case by case. Even with a standard market price for some type of service, different strategies taken and the value of services weighted by the clients’ judgments may make the charge much higher than the average. Graphical design or painting is another example.
However, when cheating and fraud are involved, it becomes a completely different situation. I always hold the viewpoint that there are players other than a competitor in any business activity, unlike in poker games. These players, including employees, suppliers, partners and clients, are key to companies’ long term development, therefore a relationship of mutual benefits should be built up. And the foundation of such relationship is trust. Bluffing does not help with that. Once a bluff fails or is exposed later, the trust will be damaged and never recover again. I always believe that honesty or integrity is the ultimate way for long-term success in business. And this is only explained from a utilitarianist’s perspective, not to mention that my value system also comply with this philosophy.
There was also a discussion on the fact that women generally have pressures to work harder than men in order to prove their professional competency. This phenomenon has been observed myself in many places. Especially in Eastern societies like China where patriarchal power still has more advantage, women seem to have only two choices: either they act cooperatively or they rise to the occasion and challenge the deontology. And they hardly take it as easy as men do. So we are often surprised by “superwomen”, including those who can drink a lot at social dining table. Rather than