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Material Incentives (material + incentive)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting60%
Humanities and Social Sciences40%

Selected Abstracts

"Do Ourselves Credit and Render a Lasting Service to Mankind": British Moral Prestige, Humanitarian Intervention, and the Barbary Pirates

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2003
Oded Löwenheim
This paper raises the issue of moral credibility in international relations and shows that considerations of preserving moral prestige can become crucial for armed humanitarian intervention. It contrasts realist and constructivist explanations about the causes of humanitarian intervention and demonstrates that traditional accounts do not provide a complete understanding of the phenomenon of intervention. In the case studied here, Britain engaged in a relatively costly humanitarian intervention against the Barbary pirates, slave trade in Christian Europeans due to her willingness to defy moral criticism and exhibit consistency with her professed moral principles. No material incentives and/or constraints influenced the British decision, and neither was it affected by a sense of felling, with regard to the Christian slaves. Instead, allegations that Britain urged Europe to abolish the black slave trade out of selfish interests, while at the same time turning a blind eye toward the Christian slave trade of the pirates, undermined British moral prestige and became the cause of the Barbary expedition. [source]

Cultivating small business influence in the UK: the federation of small businesses' journey from outsider to insider

JOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Issue 4 2003
Grant Jordan
Abstract This case study charts the classic transformation of a small business organisation from being a vehicle of protest that attracted a reasonable but transient membership into a much larger group with a more stable membership and a group with an effective insider policy style. The paper asserts that the change in style and the change in recruiting success are not causally linked, and, indeed, it claims that an insider style may harm recruiting. In the case of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), however, any potential damage through adopting an insider style was more than offset by the separate decision to market the group door to door with a package of selective material incentives (Olson 1965). The paper describes the predominant insider politics style of political representation and finds that while the FSB has moved in that direction, it does not fully fit the stereotype. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications [source]

Reactions of Developing-Country Elites to International Population Policy

POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 4 2002
Nancy Luke
The authors examine the global diffusion of international population policy, which they consider a cultural item. The process of cultural diffusion is often seen as spontaneous: items of Western culture are in demand because they are universally attractive. Yet cultural flows may also be directed, they may be unattractive to their intended recipients, and their acceptance may depend on persuasion and material incentives. The authors consider the range of responses of national elites to the new population policy adopted by the United Nations at Cairo in 1994. Strongly influenced by feminists, the Cairo Program of Action promotes gender equity and reproductive health and demotes previous concerns with population growth. The data are interviews with representatives of governmental and nongovernmental organizations involved in population and health in five developing countries. To interpret the interviews, the authors draw on two theoretical frameworks. The first emphasizes the attractiveness of new cultural items and the creation of a normative consensus about their value. The second emphasizes differentials in power and resources among global actors and argues that the diffusion of cultural items can be directed by powerful donor states. Interviews in Bangladesh, Ghana, Jordan, Malawi, and Senegal portray a mixed reception to Cairo: enthusiastic embrace of certain aspects of the Cairo policy by some members of the national elite and a realistic assessment of donor power by virtually all. Strategies of rhetoric and action appear to be aimed at maintaining and directing the flows of donor funds. [source]

WHY SOCIAL PREFERENCES MATTER , THE IMPACT OF NON-SELFISH MOTIVES ON COMPETITION, COOPERATION AND INCENTIVES

THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 478 2002
Ernst Fehr
A substantial number of people exhibit social preferences, which means they are not solely motivated by material self-interest but also care positively or negatively for the material payoffs of relevant reference agents. We show empirically that economists fail to understand fundamental economic questions when they disregard social preferences, in particular, that without taking social preferences into account, it is not possible to understand adequately (i) effects of competition on market outcomes, (ii) laws governing cooperation and collective action, (iii) effects and the determinants of material incentives, (iv) which contracts and property rights arrangements are optimal, and (v) important forces shaping social norms and market failures. [source]

The Erosion and Sustainability of Norms and Morale

THE JAPANESE ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 1 2003
Michihiro Kandori
I examine why the performance of an organization is often subject to gradual erosion. I assume that players are motivated partly by psychological factors, norms and morale, and that they are willing to exert extra efforts if others do so. I show that repeated random shocks induce the erosion of the extra efforts supported by norms and morale, but they do not completely decay; in the long run a certain range of efforts are sustainable. Hence different organizations typically enjoy diverse norms and morale, which persist for a long time, in the vicinity of the equilibrium determined by material incentives. [source]