Ancient IBM wisdom (from 1979) that the bosses just straight up promptly forgot
(media.piefed.social)
Apparently a page from an internal IBM training manual. Some further attempts at source it
The same argument for cartels. "We didn't all increase our prices to the exact same amount, we just paid a consulting company to tell us which price we should use. Of course our competitors used the exact same company, but that's just a coincidence".