Bad Arguments and Rationalization in Business
7 Pages Posted: 30 May 2017 Last revised: 10 Nov 2021
Abstract
The following note attempts to catalog and analyze a set of flawed but common arguments made in business and organizational settings to drive strategic and operational decision-making. The arguments are deconstructed into syllogistic form—a set of premises leading to a conclusion—and analyzed for validity and soundness. The final part of this note pays attention to ways decision-makers can avoid such bad arguments and the rationalization that often goes hand in hand with them.
Excerpt
UVA-E-0406
Rev. Nov. 29, 2018
Bad Arguments and Rationalization in Business
The following note attempts to identify and analyze a few examples of flawed but common arguments made in business and organizational settings to drive strategic and operational decision-making. The arguments are deconstructed into syllogistic form—a set of premises leading to a conclusion—and analyzed for validity and soundness. The final part of this note pays attention to ways decision-makers can avoid such bad arguments and the rationalization that often goes hand in hand with them.
The Legal Defense: “Well, it ain't against the law”
This is a common defense for a variety of wildly profitable corporate maneuvers, including lobbying government officials, corporate inversion, and patent trolling. The below syllogism illustrates one of the most common structures of this argument:
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Keywords: legal defense argument, bandwagon argument, professional argument
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