Pursuit Of Self-interest Research Articles

THE FORMATION OF A “SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM” IN UPPER GERMANY: LEONHARD FRONSPERGER’S “ON THE PRAISE OF SELF-INTEREST”

In 1564, Leonhard Fronsperger, a military expert and citizen of the Free Imperial City of Ulm in Upper Germany, publishes the booklet “On the Praise of Self-Interest” (“Von dem Lob deß Eigen Nutzen”). Using the form of a satirical poem, he demonstrates how the individual pursuit of self-interest can lead to the common good. Writing long before Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith, Fronsperger presents a thorough analysis of all kinds of self-interested social, political, and economic relations. His praise of self-interest demonstrates how, over the sixteenth century, the interplay of economic success (in particular in major trading cities), a more realistic conception of human behavior, and some aspects of humanism and the Reformation led to a new understanding of the origins of economic dynamics. This becomes the basis for what Max Weber ([1904–05] 2009) would later term “the spirit of capitalism.”

Re-reading Noir

ABSTRACT This article considers Judith Fetterley's The Resisting Reader in relation to the author's current research on Cold-War American women's crime fiction. The dominant critical framework about this fiction from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s is noir, a masculinist genre about male loners / outsiders that often embraces a cynical or nihilistic worldview. Many of these books objectify women and feature a spider woman or femme fatale, who is punished for her pursuit of self-interest and use of her sexuality to attain power. The lesser-known female crime writers of the period were–in many ways–resisting readers of this tradition. Their re-readings and rewritings often privileged community and connection over isolation and offered more complicated female characters. The author uses the case of Charlotte Armstrong's A Dram of Poison (1956) to make this case.

Family Firms Can Perform Better by Overcoming Strategic Unwillingness: Implications of “Familiness” for Coopetition Strategy

This study discusses the primary characteristics of family firms in implementing strategic decisions and the fundamental nature of coopetition. In this context, we provide a rather ironic perspective that has not been discussed in prior studies. Family firms prioritize the preservation of socioemotional wealth rather than seeking economic benefits when making strategic choices, explaining their unwillingness to engage in coopetition strategies. However, these strategic features enable family firms to implement coopetition strategies more successfully than other types of firms. This is because they demonstrate a lower risk of opportunistic behavior, driven by the pursuit of self-interest rather than collective benefits. This study provides valuable insights and implications by associating the unique characteristics of family firms in implementing strategic decisions with the likelihood and stability of coopetition.

Party over Pocketbook? How Party Cues Influence Opinion When Citizens Have a Stake in Policy

Do political parties influence opinion when citizens have a personal stake in policy? With an experimental design that exploits a naturally occurring, sharp variation in party cues, we study the effects of party cues during a collective bargaining conflict over the salary and work rights for public employees in Denmark. Even in this context—where the self-interest of public employees was strongly mobilized and where their party went against it—we find that party cues move opinion among partisans at least as much as in previous studies. But party cues do not lead citizens to go against their self-interest. Rather, we show that party cues temper the pursuit of self-interest among public employees by moderating the most extreme policy demands. These findings highlight an unappreciated potential of political parties to moderate—not fuel—extreme opinion.

The Politics of Space and the Search for Ethico-Moral Rearmament in Zimbabwe in John Eppel’s Hatchings

This article analyses the politics of space and the search for national regeneration in a society that is bifurcated along class, moral, and ethical lines. Whichever way one looks at it, Zimbabwe’s spatialised realities in both denotative and connotative terms stubbornly stand out. Space here is used as a discursive method of inclusion and exclusion. There are opposition spaces, ZANU-PF spaces, church spaces, corrupt spaces and spaces of violence and coercion. What are often dwarfed are those spaces that represent the future, national cohesion and multiculturalism, because they have never been allowed to flourish. This article examines the novel Hatchings (2006) by John Eppel in order to argue that the spaces of national toxicity preponderate over the spaces that represent national development, healing and justice. The article invokes theories of space and place by such theorists as Henri Lefebvre, Setha Low and Ranka Primorac to argue that space is socially produced and imbued with symbolic meaning over and above its physicality. As embodied, space(s) houses metaphors, ideology, behaviours, habits and orientations that can either unhinge or redeem a society depending on the balance of forces at play in given social contexts. What Eppel seems to be suggesting, the article concludes, is that despite the fact that Zimbabwe has been in the tenacious grip of the spaces of looters and immoral personages, the nation possesses within itself spaces for self-renewal that are often ignored or suppressed in the relentless pursuit of self-interest. There is a need for a new national culture and ethos that propels the nation into the future rather than the abyss.

Disclosure of own interest (Media policy/ Meta journalism)

Disclosure of own interest (Media policy/ Meta journalism)

"Quale pace tra il ricco e il povero?" (Sir 13,18b): Il binomio povertà – ricchezza nel libro di Ben Sira by Francesco Savini

Reviewed by: "Quale pace tra il ricco e il povero?" (Sir 13,18b): Il binomio povertà – ricchezza nel libro di Ben Sira by Francesco Savini Francis M. Macatangay francesco savini, "Quale pace tra il ricco e il povero?" (Sir 13,18b): Il binomio povertà – ricchezza nel libro di Ben Sira ( AnBib 230; Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press, 2020). Pp. 388. Paper €38. The current global pandemic has made reflections on the relationship between rich and poor less abstract. It has made many aware that poor people and countries suffer more than those who have access to adequate health care, greater resources, and better living conditions. Indeed, many have been forced to face the inequality, the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the haves and the have-nots in society. During the Second Temple period, Ben Sira was one of the voices that spoke to the tension between the rich and the poor. The presence of the polarities rich and poor in the book invites inquiry into how this pair of opposites functions in his thoughts. What does Ben Sira have to say about wealth and poverty in light of his tradition and belief in God? Does his work display a form of polemical response to the economic disparities of his time? These are just some of the issues that this monograph, which is a revised dissertation written in Italian at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome under the direction of Nuria Calduch-Benages (2019), attempts to address by tracing Ben Sira's thoughts on the subject of material goods. Savini focuses on texts where the polarity "rich–poor" frequently occurs, namely, Sir 13:1–24; 30:14–31:4; and 10:19–11:28. The methodical and thorough exegesis of the Hebrew text of these passages forms the core of the volume. The present work has seven chapters, starting with the first chapter's survey of previous studies on the topic. Along with insights from the earlier works, particular attention to historical aspects, specifically in their economic and political expressions, and to the pedagogical facets guides the work. In short, the approach is sociological, pedagogical, and theological. The second chapter begins with an examination of the various lexemes for poverty and wealth (an appendix is provided). Concerning Proverbs and Hebrew Ben Sira, it is frequently said that the sapiential corpus witnesses to the sages' interest in the moral and theological aspects of riches. More importantly, Ben Sira's mention of these dialectical [End Page 685] opposites determines the texts selected for the study. Since this mutual opposition between poverty and wealth is a socioeconomic reality, a description of the sociohistorical period of Ben Sira's writing occupies the third chapter. Although S. concurs with the common view that Ben Sira's scribal activities took place between 200 b.c.e. and 175 b.c.e., he is nonetheless more comfortable placing Ben Sira's work around 190 b.c.e., a time that was beset not only by political conflicts inside and outside of Judea but also with social, religious, and cultural tensions. Such realities are said to have swayed Ben Sira's words on wealth and poverty, an issue he treats in service of the moral and religious education of Israel's youth. In chaps. 4, 5, 6, and 7, S. exegetically investigates the selected texts where the opposites rich and poor occur. Each chapter proceeds with the following classic steps: (1) contextualization of the text within the book; (2) textual criticism to establish or reconstruct the text when possible; (3) literary analysis that pays attention to the internal dynamics, images, and rhetorical elements in the text; (4) exegetical and theological commentary on every verse; and (5) conclusion, which highlights the insights from the text and some possible lines of actualization. In the fourth chapter, on Sir 13:1–24, S. describes the perpetual tension between the rich and the poor. The text depicts the rich as calculating and fake, viewing everything according to egoistic interests. Although the absence of any references to God makes it appear as if the world is governed by the rich and the powerful, Ben Sira actually wants to emphasize horizontal relationships. To evade harm and moral...

The Contribution of Religion to a More Comprehensive Environmental Education

The causes of contemporary environmental and ecological crisis are multiple and complex. This crisis cannot be resolved by science or technology alone. We need not only knowledge, economic, and technology, but also worldviews, ethos, and practices to reconnect humans, other species, and nature. A sustainable ecology relies on ideals and ways of life which include value, belief, worldview, ethical commitment, and pattern of life. The Enlightenment tradition prioritizes human sovereignty over non-human world and invokes individualism, materialism, and consumerism, which objectify, materialize, and instrumentalize the non-human world; detach human being from transcendental constraint on human desire; and seduce human being into short-term self-interested pursuit. They are the main determinants of modern way of living and the major causes of contemporary environmental and ecological crisis. Religious worldviews define the status of human in the world and the human-nature relation. Religious ethos can be biocentric and ecocentric ethics rather than self-centered ethics or materialistic worldview. Furthermore religion grounds its ethics on transcendental or sacred base and incorporates its ethical norms in the practice of everyday life, communal living, and even every spheres of human activities. Nevertheless, there are diverse religions and various models of environmental education. There are difference, even disputes, between science and religion in some aspects. In a situation of diversity there needs to be an open and inclusive public sphere and procedure of engaged mutual understanding for reaching a consensus or temporary mutual agreement concerning environmental education.

Two cheers for school bureaucracy

Bureaucracies are often perceived as inflexible, impersonal, hierarchical, and too devoted to rules and red tape. But David Labaree makes a case for these characteristics being a positive in the world of public education. U.S. schools are built within a liberal democratic system, where the liberal pursuit of self-interest is often in tension with the democratic pursuit of egalitarianism. In recent years, Labaree argues, schools have tilted toward the liberal side, enabling privileged families to game the system to help their children get ahead. In such a system, an impersonal bureaucracy stands as a check that ensures that the democratic side of schooling, in which all children are treated equally, remains in effect.

Crisis and Cultural Evolution: Steering the Next Normal from Self-Interest to Concern and Fairness

This essay examines the current time of crisis and offers a vision of the way in which our society and our law can evolve in response. Crises of this scale are evolution-forcing events and I argue that the current moment can move us towards a fundamentally different vision of law and justice. It is the first essay or article to show that the autonomous pursuit of self-interest was a common assumption or value in the major intellectual forces of the twentieth century: classical free market economics, behavioral economics, and sociobiology, as well as in the competing visions of a just society of John Rawls and Robert Nozick. After introducing the alternative normative frameworks of caring developed by Carol Gilligan and of concern developed by Leslie Bender, I show how the common law of torts and contracts embraced self-interest as a value and then how tort and contract law could embrace the values of concern and fairness. I conclude that the danger of a culture that values the autonomous pursuit of self-interest above all else has been exposed by our current crisis and that an evolution towards a cultural regard for concern and fairness is a must.

Criminalization of Youth Culture: Content Analysis of Music Videos of Youth Idols

The article concentrates on the influence of musical art pieces on the dissemination and approval in youth environment values that are criminal in their orientation and content. Intrinsic to this problem is the destruction of the system of moral and legal norms that ensure the safety of a person, his property, and the possibility of self-realization and self-affirmation in activities aimed at ensuring public welfare. Criminal culture creates a threat to the security of citizens, stability and integrity of the state, hindering its planned development. The paper shows that music and watching videos are now an integral part of the leisure of a significant number of young people. At the same time, viewers do not always realize how often the video clips they watch affect the subconscious, the desire to satisfy egoistic interests by any means. A sociological study conducted in 2019 with the use of content analysis revealed that many popular musical works openly promote a disdain for the law, the right to assert power over people by force. The units to analyze were: demonstration in a video of the state of actors under the influence of alcohol, drugs, manifestations of various forms of violence, committing crimes by groups of antisocial orientation, freedom to use weapons, obscene language. The authors have also determined the frequency of representation of the elements of antisocial and criminal culture in the video clips popular among young people. 60 % of them demonstrate foul language and ready-to-use weapons, 50 % present examples of aggressive behaviour, most often under the influence of alcohol, and 20 % — actions of a criminal nature. The findings have confirmed the hypothesis: the visual content of video clips widely distributed on the Web is distinguished by a large number of elements of deviant behaviour borrowed from the criminal subculture, and modern society actively adopts them as a behaviour pattern. An urgent problem is to organize the counteraction of different publics, art workers to the spread of the criminal culture’ values exploiting music popular among the youth.

Economics and novels: good, evil and becoming better people

This paper considers differences in how economists and novelists view the importance of good and evil in determining social outcomes. As opposed to novelists, economists see the possibility of achieving desirable outcomes through the pursuit of self-interest in markets with good and evil having little influence on that achievement. However, the paper also considers problems with relying on self-interest alone to generate publicly desirable outcomes through markets and points out limits to self-interest in markets. It is argued that novels and literature are a time-tested way of promoting the moral education necessary for well-functioning markets. Attention is turned to the similarities between Adam Smith’s theory of moral sentiments and the novels of Jane Austen on the means by which people are able to transcend narrow self-interest in ways that improve both economic and social outcomes.

Financial Fraud by Family Firms: The Role of Commitment to Self-interest and Family Wealth

This study extends the research on organizational financial fraud by investigating the antecedents of family firms’ involvement in it. I argue that the pursuit of self-interest and family business ...

Epistemological Implications of the Tragedy of the Commons

This paper defines and examines the Garett Hardin’s concept of the Tragedy of the Commons. First, an introductory to the concept is presented along with an extensive critique on Hardin’s 1968 impactful publication. Second, although the tragedy of the commons belies in the field of environmental economics, an extensive research is conducted on how the concept has naturally extended to other cornerstones such as Philosophy, Ethics & Morality, and human behavior. The objective of this paper is to not see whether the concept is dubbed correct or erroneous, but rather urge readers to take a collective stand regardless of the universal validity of the concept and shed some serious insight on the hazards of climate change and pursuit of self-interest.

Islam’s Market Ideology: A Brief Outline

Many of the studies on the Islamic market doctrine have failed to integrate the idea within the broad social objective of its Islamic doctrinal origin. Consequently, the outcomes of such studies have only partially explicated the Islamic market theory. This brief study attempts to contextualize the Islamic market ideology within the broad social goal of the Islamic Shari’ah (law), in order to give it a more complete understanding. Using an interpretative approach that attempts to integrate market moral injunctions, pricing and profit, and price control, among others into the broader social doctrine of Islam, we established that the Islamic market ideology, broadly, seeks to promote the overall economic well-being of the members of society through creating fair opportunities for economic gains, enforcing the right to private property, and curbing exploitative tendencies of economic agents towards one another, among other things. Consequently, the Islamic market ideology is founded on the ideals of economic justice, which, generally, emphasize fairness as a moral duty enforceable by the state. It is further established that the individual has the right to engage in exchange activities and earn fair rewards, and this must not, ordinarily, be interfered with. However, when, in the course of exercising this right, the individual’s pursuit of self-interest puts the overall public welfare into jeopardy, the state is obliged to give public welfare precedence over individual self-interests. Thus, there is room for the state to intervene even in pricing; though, under normal circumstances, prices in the market should depend on the prevailing market conditions.

The Ancient Indian Economic Thought & the Concept of Welfare State

It is generally believed that the systematic study of economics and its principles was started in 1776 with the publication of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, who has been universally held as the founding father of economics. Prior to Adam Smith, many economic concepts and theories were developed from the early 16th century to the middle of the 18th century. Economics as a science trails its origin from the perennial philosophy of great ancient and medieval thinkers from the Buddhist literature to Kautilya. The research paper attempts to dwell into ancient economic and political theories, bringing to the forefront their relevance even today. A polymath of diverse abilities, Kautilya was one of the defining forces responsible for shaping not just the Mauryan Empire, but Indian history itself. Considered the most comprehensive account of economic principles, ideologies, and thought, Kautilya’s Arthashastra provided an important precursor to classical economics. As the text abounds in generalities, Chanakya seeks to make his ideas relevant across situations and eras. Regrettably, for the development of ancient economic thought, Kautilya’s ideas were unknown to Renaissance philosophers and thinkers who are largely credited for the creation of modern economic thought. While the modern economic theory focuses on the pursuit of self-interests and material pleasures, Indian texts have treated ethics and welfare as one of the important life objectives. The lacuna created due to ignorance and lack of awareness has prevented individuals and corporations in acknowledging and implementing the economics practices mentioned in ancient religious and political texts. The text addresses this issue and evaluates the Indian economic thought. Of course, the objective here is not to advocate Indian economics as a separate economic thought process. Laws of economics are universal. Economic agents, irrespective of their culture, country, and know-how, would respond to incentives and coercion in almost the same way.

AIRLINE PHILANTHROPY – INVESTMENT OR EXPENSE?

Airlines are corporately socially and environmentally responsible (CSER). Unlike predecessor ‘CSR’, CSER acknowledges the importance of the environment. CSER-managed airlines obey the law, service customers safely, manage employees fairly, reward owners appropriately, pay suppliers promptly and mitigate environmental impacts. Unlike philanthropy (i.e. CSERplus), airlines’ CSER-management is underpinned by economics – the optimal allocation of resources. External pressures push airlines to go beyond economically-viable, strategic investments to make philanthropic donations which are voluntary, discretionary contributions purportedly to further their interests. If the CSERplus philanthropic contributions are non-strategic they could increase costs without any benefit. Husted and Salazar (2006) determined three motivations for corporate entities to engage in strategic CSERplus (philanthropic) activities: either to (a) prevent unfavourable government intervention (b) create product differentiation to increase sales or (c) trigger cost reductions. Content and theme analysis of the top 10 airlines’ CSER reports indicated that none of the three motivations applied to their philanthropic contributions. Philanthropy appeared to support the altruistic or egoistic interests of managers rather than the airlines. There were no success measures. In fact, philanthropic donations appeared to increase costs at a time when many airlines were reducing services and products to remain competitive. The conclusion is that airline philanthropy is an expense rather than an investment. This paper contributes to the paucity of current literature on philanthropic motivations and airline CSER management.

Identity-motivated reasoning: Biased judgments regarding political leaders and their actions

We investigate how constituents interpret information about political leaders in the course of forming judgments about them. More specifically, we are interested in the intentionality attributed to the actions and decisions taken by political leaders – whether they are perceived as designed to benefit the politician’s own interests, or the interests of the public. In two field studies, we show that the political orientation of constituents plays a central role in driving constituents’ judgments about political leaders and their actions (in terms of beneficiary attributions), reflecting an identity-motivated reasoning process. Political leaders of the ingroup are perceived more favorably than political leaders of the outgroup, in terms of trust and a desire to see that leader represent the country in the international arena. More interestingly, constituents are likely to attribute the actions of ingroup leaders as intended to benefit the country (national interests), and the actions of outgroup leaders as intended to benefit the political leaders themselves (egoistic interests).

METHODOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALISM AND HUMAN MODEL IN ORTHODOX ECONOMIC THEORY

Today it is widely recognized that the economic development is largely determined by the decision taken by economic agents. Modern economic science does not provide an undeniable and perfect definition of economic agents’economic behavior and a universally recognized and having no alternative model of human behavior is not yet formulated in the economic theory. Scientists proceed from the different methodological approaches and use various characteristics for the development perceptions regarding human behavior. Despite a large number of scientific schools, directions, and divisions of modern economic theory, there is a dominant model of human behavior which represents a specific orientation and comparable model for other economic schools this is the model of Homo Economicus that arose within the classical economic theory and was developed by the neoclassical economic school. This model is considered to be one of the founding dogmas of the modern Mainstream Economics in which the classical economic theory has reached the highest level of formalization. The given article considers the peculiarities and interconnections of orthodox economic theory and Mainstream Economics and mentions that along of evolution of their interrelations the optimization behavior, the principles of minimizing expenses and maximize of a profit still remain to be a general methodological approach. The modern economic mainstream is based on the fundamental postulate such as methodological individualism that is most widely used an analytical method in modern economic science. According to methodological individualism, the human behavior is the main indicator of the nature of economic phenomena The traditional microeconomic orthodox theory considers human beings as independent, associative, selfish, and rational species, which have stable and exogenous preferences and in every particular moment have full information about the current situation and use the information in order to satisfy own egoistic interests with a purpose to maximize a benefit. To define the model of economic men the acronym REMM (or «Resourceful, Evaluative, Maximizing Man») proposed by Karl Brunner and William H.Meckling is used. Based on the development of the acronym REMM the acronym RREEMM(or„Resourceful, Restricted, Expecting, Evaluating, Maximizing Man”)was developed. Other models of human behavior were developed by a sociologist Siegwart Michael Lindenberg. He distinguishes two types of human behavior and presents them by acronyms SRSM (or “Socialized,Role-Playing, Sanctioned Man”)and OSAM(or“Оpinionated,Sensitive, Acting Man”). The human behavior model is a fundamental and systematic element for any direction of the modern economic theory. Every economic school develops its own model of human behavior that best illustrates this school as a theoretical system.

How Can we Achieve a Sustainable Redistributive Policy? Rethinking the Relationship Between Civic Engagement, Neighborhood Relationship and Labor Market Status

The aim of this article is to examine the effect of social relations on support for redistribution and to explore desirable forms of redistribution based on mutual understanding. Most previous studies have explained support for redistribution as insurance against risk or the pursuit of self-interest. Under the current framework, however, it is difficult to explain the establishment of a sustainable redistributive policy. To overcome this limitation, I focus on the role of social relations that suppress the tendency to pursue self-interest and promote support for redistribution. My findings indicate that social relations moderate the effect of self-interest and directly affect support for redistribution. From this result, I conclude that social relations could facilitate mutual understanding and alleviate the negative side effects of the labor market.