Michaela Lobo

The Purdue Pharma scandal, in which executives engaged in fraudulent and aggressive marketing campaigns for prescription opioids, exemplifies a corporate failure that raises fundamental questions about group responsibility. This article argues that Purdue Pharma’s failure to inform customers, salespeople, and doctors about the harmful effects of their flagship product, OxyContin, constitutes group deceptive omission—a distinct form of deception inadequately addressed in existing accounts of corporate viciousness. Building on Jennifer Lackey’s epistemological framework of group lying, I refine the concept of group deception to account for omissions in corporate contexts. My analysis extends beyond individual deception, emphasising what is required for organisations to deceive through silence. I further argue that corporations should be positively honest and, in so doing, avoid problematic deceptive omissions, given their unique epistemic position in shaping stakeholder trust and market integrity. This article ends by outlining directions for future research on epistemological questions implicated in understanding corporate responsibility.

Despite substantial corporate investment in mentorship, learning, and talent development, access to these knowledge sharing practices may be unequal. This could be due to structural prejudices that determine who receives mentorship, whose learning is prioritised, and how knowledge is shared in organisations. Philosophical business ethics research has primarily focused on speaker-directed epistemic injustice, where employees’ testimony is silenced or discredited. This article introduces hearer-directed epistemic injustice, a novel concept that highlights the wrong suffered by employees who are unjustly denied knowledge. Using Hidden Figures as a case, this article illustrates how testimonial oversimplification or omission can perpetuate structural inequalities in organisations. By extending Fricker’s theory of epistemic injustice, I argue that “speakers”—mentors, managers, finance professionals, and leaders—should actively foster virtuous knowledge sharing practices. This research contributes to business ethics by providing a conceptual framework for identifying hearer-directed epistemic injustice in organisations and ways to mitigate prejudice in organisational epistemic practices.