Competitive Irrationality in Transitional Economies: Are Communist Managers Less Irrational?

Lance E. Brouthers, Dana-Nicoleta Lascu, Steve Werner

Journal of Business Ethics · 2008 · Volume 83 · Issue 3

Abstract

Why do marketing managers in the transitional economies of Eastern Europe and China often engage in competitively irrational behavior, choosing pricing strategies that damage competitors’ profits, rather than choosing pricing strategies that improve their firm’s profits? We propose one possible reason, the moral vacuum created by the collapse of communist ideology. We hypothesize and find that managers who experienced formal communist moral ideological indoctrination are less likely to be competitively irrational than the post-communist managers who did not. Implications are discussed.

Keywords

competitive irrationality, morality, Marxism, Maoism, China, Slovakia

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