Unilateral Commitment Research Articles

Act of faith versus voluntary reciprocation: Asymmetric commitments in exchange relationships

AbstractFinancial payments take place in a wide variety of contexts. Expanding on a range of alternative forms of payments outside the common purchase of products and services at a price, this present article focuses on one dimension by which payments differ, namely, whether the payments take place in an exchange with mutual versus unilateral commitment between the buyer and the seller. This framework takes into account the timing and nature of commitments buyers and sellers make in an exchange, thereby further revealing the psychology underlying people's decisions to pay. In particular, the party that is unilaterally committed in an exchange relationship engages in “acts of faith”, whereas the party that is uncommitted engages in decisions of “voluntary reciprocation”.

On the Principle of Estoppel in International Disputes—Taking Preah Vihear Temple Case as an Example Introduction

The principle of estoppel in public international law is based on the principles of justice, good faith and consistency. It is the product of applying the principle of estoppel in domestic law to the international community by analogy. Under the promotion of the theories of authoritative jurists and international judicial precedents, it has become a general legal principle in international law. This paper will take the Preah Vihear Temple case as an example to illustrate the nature of estoppel from four aspects, namely, the meaning of the statement must be clear and unambiguous; unilateral commitments can also create an estoppel; no objection (lack of protest) or a silence; and the requirement of a reliance.

Interpretation of Unilateral Acts in International Law

The article explores the question of interpretation of unilateral acts in international law both from the perspective of ascertaining their binding force (law determination) and from the perspective of ascertaining their content (content determination). It argues that the objective intention of the author to be bound is what distinguishes binding commitments of unilateral origin from non-binding ones. In turn, this involves the interpretation of a unilateral act in accordance with its content and the circumstances surrounding its making. In practice, the use of clear and specific wording in conjunction with a set of contextual indicators are indicia of the intention to create a binding unilateral commitment. Against this backdrop, the article continues by addressing the question of interpretation of unilateral acts from the standpoint of ascertaining their content. It shows that the text of the act is the primary consideration in determining its content—and that its context as well as the circumstances surrounding its making are also interpretative elements that need to be taken into account. Due to the unilateral origin of these acts the interpretative rule applicable to international agreements can only be used as a point of reference when it comes to interpreting the content of these acts. In this light, the article concludes that more practice is needed in order to elucidate the exact role and weight that should be ascribed to non-textual elements in the context of interpreting unilateral acts. At the same time, the article argues in favour of adopting a broader approach to the concept of ‘interpretation’ in international law. Viewing interpretation not merely as content determination but also as law ascertainment allows us to better assess the persuasive value of arguments in favour or against certain interpretative rules when practice is scant—as is the case with unilateral acts.

Driving cooperative actions: A multimethod study of the temporal duration of unilateral commitments

AbstractPrevious research demonstrates numerous benefits of mutual commitments between parties. However, less is understood about the effect of unilateral commitments, when one party (the committer) makes a relationship‐specific investment without an established current or forthcoming reciprocal commitment by the other party (the recipient). This problem is particularly relevant in the supply chain management domain, where organizations often make investments in their supply chain partners, and frequently assume great risks in doing so. To help organizations understand how they can initiate unilateral commitments to their benefit, we develop theory regarding the outcomes of unilateral commitments based on their temporal duration. We evaluate our hypothesis using data collected from three distinct studies, each using different methodologies and samples: a laboratory experiment of graduate students, a vignette experiment of operations management practitioners, and a secondary data analysis of baseball contracts. We find compelling support that unilateral commitments of shorter duration successfully drive recipient cooperative behavior; however, a significant decrease in recipient cooperation results from longer term unilateral commitments. Our research contributes broadly to the literature on unilateral commitments, and in particular its manifestation within supply chain management, where this research stands to make substantial impact due to the prevalence of unilateral commitments.

LEGAL FEATURES OF COMPETITIVE OBLIGATIONS UNDER THE CIVIL LAW OF THE REPUBLIC OF KAZAKHSTAN

The article analyzes specific aspects of civil regulation of the competitive obligation. The high importance and lack of practical development of the above problem determine scientific work’s undoubted novelty. Further attention to the civil principle of competitive responsibility is needed to better and rationally address civil law’s current concerns. Competitive commitments represent another type of unilateral commitment. They clearly show the features of obligations, which in the private law of foreign countries are called quasi-contract. The content of these obligations may cover those actions of the contestants on the competitive task that is usually performed by debtors under some civil law contracts – contracts, orders, commissions, and others. It is not ruled out for the contestants to commit legal acts, creating science, literature, and art. In the first case, it is not a question of the actual commission of legally significant actions by the contestants in favor of the subject who announced the contest, but about their readiness for legal obliging themselves in exchange for compliance with the person of their condition who disclosed the conflict. Public competitions are once again widespread in the civil circulation. Simultaneously, the comparison of the practice of holding available games with the provisions of civil law shows that public competitions are, in many cases, held in contravening the law. One of the many reasons for this is the imperfection of legal regulation and the lack of good ideas about the Civil Code of Kazakhstan requirements for public competition and their complete or partial disregard. Key words: competition, obligation, regulation, public customer, organizer, specifics of competitive responsibilities, types of games.

Efficient Non-Cooperative Provision of Costly Positive Externalities via Conditional Commitments

We consider games where individual contributions are costly but beneficial to other players, so that contributing nothing is a dominant strategy. Considering that players may be unable to write binding agreements but may make binding unilateral commitments that are conditional on others' actions, we study a mechanism based on conditional commitment functions (CCFs). If players must choose their CCFs once and simultaneously, the mechanism contributes to the Nash program since its strong (or coalition-proof) equilibria realize precisely the core outcomes of the corresponding bargaining problem. If players can communicate, the outcome can thus be expected to be Pareto-efficient. Even without communication, the core outcomes may be found by simple individual learning rules. We motivate the idea in a Cournot duopoly and a public good problem and then derive our results in a very general decision-theoretic framework and give further examples from different areas of economics.

Inflexible Repositioning: Commitment in Competition and Uncertainty

We study the value of commitment in a business environment that is both competitive and uncertain, in which two firms face stochastic demands and compete in positioning and repositioning. If the future demand tends to disperse or the demand uncertainty is sufficiently large, one firm chooses rigidity (i.e., commits not to change its positions), and the other chooses flexibility (i.e., to reposition freely). We find that a firm’s rigidity can benefit not only itself, but also its flexible rival. When uncertainty is larger, rigidity becomes more valuable relative to flexibility. These results arise because the asymmetric equilibrium generates two collective gains in addition to the usual individual gain (in terms of competitive advantages) accrued to the committing firm. A firm’s rigid repositioning can soften competition and generate a commitment value, and the other firm’s flexible repositioning generates an option value. Both values then spill over to competitors within the ecosystem. These results suggest that, when firms compete under uncertainty, commitment and options are valuable not only for the party that is making the choice, but also for all competing parties collectively. Commitment value and option value do not have to be mutually exclusive; they can coexist and even strengthen each other through unilateral commitment, which achieves the best of both strategies. This paper was accepted by Juanjuan Zhang, marketing.

Adaptation, mitigation and risk-taking in climate policy

The future consequences of climate change are highly uncertain and estimates of economic damages differ widely. Governments try to cope with these risks by investing in mitigation and adaptation measures. In contrast to most of the existing literature, we explicitly model the decision of risk averse governments on mitigation and adaptation policies. We also consider the interaction of the two strategies in presence of uncertainty. Mitigation efforts of a single country trigger crowding out as other countries will reduce their mitigation efforts. This may even lead to lower mitigation on the global scale. In contrast, a unilateral commitment to large adaptation efforts benefits the single country and can reduce the global risk from climate change at the expense of other countries.

Damages, the Crown-Soldier Relationship, and the Canadian Forces Grievance Process

A recent Reference initiated before the Federal Court (but not yet decided) concerning a grievance by an officer of the Canadian Forces (CF) offers an opportunity to re-examine the unique legal dimensions of the Crown-soldier relationship. This relationship remains grounded in a Victorian perspective – some might say ‘antiquated’ – in which members of the armed forces are viewed as being in a ‘unilateral commitment in return for which the Queen assumes no obligations’, thus limiting recourse for perceived wrongs on the part of the Crown. One of the principal failings of much of the case law concerning this ‘employment’ relationship is that it tends to state what the relationship is not, rather than what it is. Using the issues raised by the Reference, this paper proposes to examine how the Crown-soldier relationship may be viewed in the context of modern public law, focusing on the circumstances under which the Crown might be liable for damages or compensation where members of the armed forces are subject to flawed decision-making. One of the principal conclusions drawn by the author is that the Federal Court is unlikely to signal a paradigm shift in this relationship and, barring legislative reform, the courts will take an incrementalist approach to modernization.

U.S. Federal Trade Commission Investigation of Google Search (2013)

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission opened an investigation into Google’s search practices in 2012. The investigation responded to complaints that Google’s “Universal Search” display favored its own web properties and demoted competing services. The Commission also investigated Google’s “scraping” of websites to obtain data for its proprietary properties and an allegation that Google prevented third parties from porting programs developed for Google “AdWords” keyword advertising to other search platforms. The Commission ended its investigation in 2013 with no action regarding alleged search bias. The Commission accepted a unilateral commitment from Google to allow websites to opt out of scraping and to amend its conditions to allow porting of AdWords management programs to other platforms. The European Commission reached a different conclusion in its investigation of Google’s search-related practices. This chapter describes the allegations and the factors that should be considered to assess allegations that Google harms competition by favoring services in which it has a financial interest.

Dual commitment in the organization: Effects of the interplay of team and organizational commitment on employee citizenship behavior, efficacy beliefs, and turnover intentions

Affective team and organizational commitment are among the most important employee attachments in the workplace. While past research has focused on identifying the differential relationships of these commitments with relevant workplace outcomes, the present study examines their additive and interactive effects based on a multi-foci research framework. Drawing on consistency and optimal distinctiveness theory, we predicted that team and organizational commitment add to and enhance each other's target-specific effects on team- and organization-directed citizenship behavior, efficacy beliefs, and turnover intentions. Furthermore, taking a person-centered perspective, we tested the hypothesis that dually committed employees score higher on the chosen outcomes than employees with unilateral commitments (to the team and the organization). Results from a survey study (n=1362) confirmed our hypotheses for citizenship behavior. With regard to efficacy beliefs and turnover intentions, however, compensatory interactions were observed and dually committed employees scored higher on the team-directed outcome components. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

The Impact of Unilateral Commitment on Transboundary Pollution

To reach a common target of environmental quality, countries can choose to commit to a stream of pollution abatement right from the beginning of the game or decide upon abatement at each moment of time. Though most of the previous literature studies homogeneous strategies where no country or all countries commit to a (same) predefined policy, reality goes along a different way: some countries make more efforts than others to reduce pollutant emission. The main novelty of this paper resides in the introduction of this kind of heterogeneous strategic behavior currently observed among large pollution nations. We find that the pollution level can be lower under heterogeneous than under homogeneous strategies. A stringent environmental quality target will induce the committed player to produce an abatement effort that more than compensates the free-riding attitude of the non-committed player.

Economics and Politics of International Investment Agreements

This paper investigates the design and implications of international investment agreements. These are ubiquitous, potent and heavily criticized state-to-state treaties that protect foreign investment against host country policies. We show that optimal agreements cause national but not global underregulation (regulatory chill). The incentives to form agreements and their distributional consequences depend on countries' unilateral commitment possibilities and the direction of investment flows. The benefits from agreements between developed countries accrue to foreign investors at the expense of the rest of society, but this is not the case for agreements between developed and developing countries.

Analýza indikátoru udržitelného rozvoje v oblasti klimatických změn z hlediska plnění strategie Evropa 2020

The objective of this paper is to present the results of an analysis of the indicator Greenhouse gas emissions (GGE). The GGE is one of the headline indicators tracked under the EU’s main socioeconomic strategy until the year 2020 - the EUROPE 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. In the area of sustainable growth, the Resource-efficient Europe initiative was established. For 2020, the EU has made a unilateral commitment to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions from its 28 member states by 20 % compared to 1990 levels. The GGE indicator shows total man-made emissions of the so-called Kyoto basket of greenhouse gases. It presents annual total emissions in relation to those observed in 1990. The aggregate greenhouse gas emissions are expressed in units of CO2 equivalent. The development of the GGE indicator in the EU and in the Czech Republic from 2000 to 2014 from the point of view of the ability to achieve the Strategy objectives is analyzed. In terms of the level of the analyzed indicator, the set of the EU countries can be divided into two significantly different groups - the euro area and the non-euro area; or into groups by the year of their joining the EU. Analyses of the dependency between the growth of GGE and the GDP growth for both the set of the 28 EU countries and the Czech Republic are presented as well.

Bargaining and International Environmental Agreements

This article surveys game theoretic papers focused on the negotiation process that leads to an International Environmental Agreement. Most of the papers considered apply bargaining theory, although other approaches have been considered as well. Among other issues, the papers considered analyze: the burden sharing rule that will result from a negotiation over a global public good; the role of information asymmetries; the impact of unilateral commitments, delegation, and ratification; whether or not countries are going to form groups during the negotiation process; and the influence of the expectation of a future bargaining process on investment decisions. The basic bargaining model is optimistic, as it predicts that countries will reach an efficient agreement immediately. However, all the developments of this model surveyed afterwards are rather pessimistic and even the basic model has perverse incentives for pre-negotiation signals.

Unilateral Commitment: A Prisoner’s Dilemma Perspective

We explore factors that influence successful outcomes in exchange relationships in the presence of unilateral cooperative agreements through the lenses of game theory, Transaction Cost Economics, and Social Exchange Theory. We further investigate the impact of commitment length with regard to strategic cooperation. Based on the results of a modified prisoner’s dilemma experiment with 85 participants, we find that unilateral commitments of shorter duration successfully drive partner cooperative behavior both during the periods of commitment and after the unilateral commitment to cooperate has ended. However, when long-term commitments are made we find that there is a significant decrease in partner cooperation. Our findings provide guidance surrounding the risky decision to initiate a cooperative arrangement within an exchange. Based on the results we observed, it may be best for an organization to show good faith in initiating a commitment to cooperate, but to be conservative in doing so. Short duration c...

The consequences of dual and unilateral commitment to the organisation and union

This article examines the pattern and consequences of commitment to organisation and union amongst union members in a UK National Health Service Trust. Those who perceived the industrial relations climate as positive were more likely to be dually committed to both organisation and union. As anticipated, union commitment predicted union citizenship behaviours and intent to quit the union. However, organisational commitment predicted intent to quit the organisation but not organisational citizenship behaviour, which was predicted by union commitment. Findings suggest that those with a unilateral commitment to the union are more likely than the dually committed to engage in citizenship behaviours aimed at helping fellow members and colleagues, perhaps because they feel unconstrained by any strong loyalty to the organisation.

Moderating effect of perceived inflation on dual commitment to organization and professional association

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to draw upon exchange theory to test the moderating effect of perceived inflation on dual commitment among a sample of health professionals in Ghana. The authors test this effect on the unilateral contributions of commitment to the organization and commitment to the professional association.Design/methodology/approach– Survey questionnaires were used to elicit responses from 141 health professionals in Ghana. Least square moderated regression analysis was employed to test the hypothesized relationships.Findings– The authors found that respondents do exhibit dual commitment to the organization and the professional association. The findings also supported the hypothesized moderating effect of perceived inflation on the contribution of the unilateral commitments to dual loyalty. Perceived inflation alters the contributions from the predictors, hence, reducing dual commitment.Research limitations/implications– The study sampled only public sector employees, but the authors do not consider this a fatal flaw since the public sector in Ghana employs a large percentage (51 percent) of the workforce. Future research should focus on the private sector to increase the generalizability of the perceived inflation construct.Practical implications– Perceived inflation can have adverse effects on workplace attitudes, including dual loyalty to the organization and to the union. But the finding also suggests that, in periods of inflationary pressures, high affective commitment can benefit the organization. The perceived reduction in the value of the economic exchange clearly has implications for compensation policy for the public sector in Ghana.Originality/value– Researchers have examined the perception of inflation on consumer behavior, but none has investigated the inflationary influence on workplace attitudes. This study extends the conceptualization of the index of perceived inflation and the psychology of inflation to the management literature. This study is the first to investigate the effect of perceived inflation on commitment.

Two degrees of separation: What would a successful Paris summit mean for the battle against climate change?

Joss Garman argues that positive effects of the Paris negotiations are already being seen in unilateral commitments by major polluting nations, including China and the US, and that the foundations are in place to reach a vital agreement on how progress is measured and compared.

English

Landlocked countries face significant development challenge merely from their geopolitical position. This is magnificent specifically in terms of their access to the sea. However, some argue that regional arrangements can be promising in solving at least such specific challenge in their development endeavor. In this context, this article reviews real and potential challenges and prospects Ethiopia has to deal with at three levels: domestic, regional, and international levels. Thus, by relaying on secondary data sources and qualitative research method, it highlights the major concerns and developments in the Horn of Africa by focusing on IGAD and COMESA and how different factors at different levels interact to work against or for the success of such projects. Approaching the issue from this angle, it argues that despite the challenges that seem distinct in this specific region, there is new development in this regard that seems promising. However, the sustainability of even this relative success is still dependent on the proper coordination of the dominant actors at all levels than the unilateral commitment of specific state in the region. Key words: Landlocked countries, regional projects, regional integration.