Superheroes & Villains: Diary of a Mad Ethics Professor
by Christopher Robichaud on February 26, 2008 in Diary of a Mad Ethics Professor, Features
Robichaud
Is it morally appropriate to apply for and pursue a job that I really don’t want and don’t see myself taking in order to gain an advantage-like being able to negotiate a higher salary-for other job opportunities that I am more serious about?
Sincerely,
Ethically Concerned Job Seeker
Dear Ethically Concerned Job Seeker,
Your question points to an interesting tension between two considerations. On the one hand, there’s no doubt something morally problematic about presenting yourself to an organization as being genuinely interested in working for it, when in fact you aren’t interested at all and are really only doing so to gain an advantage for yourself. Were that the end of the story, the answer to your question would clearly be, “It’s not morally appropriate.”
But, on the other hand, there at least appears to be a standard practice in the job market of doing something more or less like what you describe. And that at least suggests that there might be something like a game going on that gives you some permissions to behave in ways you otherwise wouldn’t be permitted to, just as we think lawyers gain such permissions in the context of practicing law and football players gain such permissions in the context of playing football games.
Notice, though, that the kind of game permissions I have in mind aren’t gained simply in virtue of recognizing that “everyone’s doing it.” It’s obviously a terrible argument to move immediately from the true premise that almost everyone is engaged in a certain kind of behavior to the conclusion that the behavior is morally permissible. Pick any socially sanctioned and widely practiced abominable behavior, past or present, to drive this point home.
Rather, the rough idea is that there is an overall benefit to be gained in playing the game, but for this benefit to be realized, the game must be played a certain way; specifically, players must be permitted to do things they otherwise wouldn’t be morally permitted to do.
That’s obviously a vast oversimplification of the matter, but it’s already enough to give me pause over the appropriateness of the job seeking behavior in question. Assuming there is a kind of job market game where folks apply to jobs they don’t want and won’t take just to gain a negotiating advantage, we need to ask: who does this benefit? Well, it clearly benefits the job applicants. But it doesn’t strike me as benefiting the organizations, since some of them are using valuable time and resources pursuing candidates who have no intention of working for them; and since others find themselves at a negotiating disadvantage, assuming that the applicants who really want to work for them would take the jobs offered for less. This behavior doesn’t benefit society overall, either, especially if it hurts organizations whose aim is in fact to promote societal welfare.
This unequal distribution of costs and benefits suggests that there isn’t a game going on that affords players certain moral permissions. The behavior you are thinking about, Ethically Concerned Job Seeker, only benefits you, and, let us not forget, involves a kind of deception. It strikes me that it is therefore morally impermissible.
Sincerely,
Chris Robichaud
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