Showing papers on "Value (ethics) published in 2016"

Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams

Abstract: This volume is the first comprehensive synthesis of economic, political, and cultural theories of value. David Graeber reexamines a century of anthropological thought about value and exchange, in large measure to find a way out of ongoing quandaries in current social theory, which have become critical at the present moment of ideological collapse in the face of Neoliberalism. Rooted in an engaged, dynamic realism, Graeber argues that projects of cultural comparison are in a sense necessarily revolutionary projects: He attempts to synthesize the best insights of Karl Marx and Marcel Mauss, arguing that these figures represent two extreme, but ultimately complementary, possibilities in the shape such a project might take. Graeber breathes new life into the classic anthropological texts on exchange, value, and economy. He rethinks the cases of Iroquois wampum, Pacific kula exchanges, and the Kwakiutl potlatch within the flow of world historical processes, and recasts value as a model of human meaning-making, which far exceeds rationalist/reductive economist paradigms.

Opinion: Why protect nature? Rethinking values and the environment

Abstract: A cornerstone of environmental policy is the debate over protecting nature for humans’ sake (instrumental values) or for nature’s (intrinsic values) (1). We propose that focusing only on instrumental or intrinsic values may fail to resonate with views on personal and collective well-being, or “what is right,” with regard to nature and the environment. Without complementary attention to other ways that value is expressed and realized by people, such a focus may inadvertently promote worldviews at odds with fair and desirable futures. It is time to engage seriously with a third class of values, one with diverse roots and current expressions: relational values. By doing so, we reframe the discussion about environmental protection, and open the door to new, potentially more productive policy approaches.

Altruism, Egoism, and Genetic Fitness: Economics and Sociobiology

Abstract: ECONOMISTS generally take tastes as "given" and work out the consequences of changes in prices, incomes, and other variables under the assumption that tastes do not change. When pressed, either they engage in ad hoc theorizing or they explicitly delegate the discussion of tastes to the sociologist, psychologist, or anthropologist. Unfortunately, these disciplines have not developed much in the way of systematic usable knowledge about tastes. Although economists have been reluctant to discuss systematically changes in the structure of tastes, they have long relied on assumptions about the basic and enduring properties of tastes. Self-interest is assumed to dominate all other motives,' with a prominent place also assigned to benevolence toward children2 (and occasionally others), and with self-interest partly dependent on distinction and other aspects of one's position in society.3 The dominance of self-interest and the persistence of some benevolence have usually been explained by "human nature," or an equivalent evasion of the problem. The development of modern biology since the mid-nineteenth century and of population genetics in the twentieth century made clear that "human nature" is only the beginning, not the end of the answer. The enduring traits of human (and animal) nature presumably were genetically selected under very different physical environments and social arrangements as life on earth evolved during millions of years. It is not difficult to understand why self-interest has high survival value under very different circumstances,4 but why should altruistic behavior, sometimes observed among animals as well as human beings, also survive? This kind of question has been asked by some geneticists and other biologists especially during the last two decades. Their work has recently been christened "sociI For example, Adam Smith said, "We are not ready to suspect any person of being defective in selfishness" [9, 1969, p. 446], and "it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest" [10, 1937, p. 14]. 2According to Alfred Marshall, ". . . men labor and save chiefly for the sake of their families and not for themselves" [6, 1920, p. 228]. 3Nassau Senior said, "the desire for distinction . . . may be pronounced to be the most powerful of human passions" [8, 1938, p. 12]. 4Ronald Coase argues convincingly that Adam Smith, especially in his Moral Sentiments, was groping toward an explanation of the importance of selfinterest in terms of its contribution to viable social and economic arrangements (see Coase [5, 1976]).

The Possibility of Practical Reason

Abstract: 1. INTRODUCTION 2. EPISTEMIC FREEDOM 3. WELL-BEING AND TIME 4. IS MOTIVATION INTERNAL TO VALUE? 5. THE GUISE OF THE GOOD 6. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SOMEONE ACTS? 7. THE STORY OF RATIONAL ACTION 8. THE POSSIBILITY OF PRACTICAL REASON 9. HOW TO SHARE AN INTENTION 10. DECIDING HOW TO DECIDE 11. ON THE AIM OF BELIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

Mindful Economics: The Production, Consumption, and Value of Beliefs

Abstract: In the economic models of old, agents had backward-looking expectations, arising from simple extrapolation or error-correction rules. Then came the rational-expectations revolution in macroeconomics, and in microeconomics the spread and increasing refinements of modern game theory. Agents were now highly sophisticated information processors, who could not be systematically fooled. This approach reigned for several decades until the pendulum swung back with the rise of behavioral economics and its emphasis on “heuristics and biases” (as in Tversky and Kahneman 1974). Overconfidence, confirmation bias, distorted probability weights, and a host of other “wired-in” cognitive mistakes are now common assumptions in many areas of economics. Over the last decade or so, the pendulum has started to swing again toward some form of adaptiveness, or at least implicit purposefulness, in human cognition. In this paper, we provide a perspective into the main ideas and findings emerging from the growing literature on motivated beliefs and reasoning. This perspective emphasizes that beliefs often fulfill important psychological and functional needs of the individual. Economically relevant examples include confidence in ones’ abilities, moral self-esteem, hope and anxiety reduction, social identity, political ideology and religious faith. People thus hold certain beliefs in part because

The romance of work: Gender and aspirational labour in the digital culture industries

Abstract: Despite widespread interest in the changing technologies, economies and politics of creative labour, much of the recent cultural production scholarship overlooks the social positioning of gender. This article draws upon in-depth interviews with 18 participants in highly feminized sites of digital cultural production (e.g. fashion, beauty and retail) to examine how they articulate and derive value from their passionate activities. I argue that the discourses of authenticity, community building and brand devotion that they draw on are symptomatic of a highly gendered, forward-looking and entrepreneurial enactment of creativity that I term ‘aspirational labour’. Aspirational labourers pursue productive activities that hold the promise of social and economic capital; yet the reward system for these aspirants is highly uneven. Indeed, while a select few may realize their professional goals – namely to get paid doing what they love – this worker ideology obscures problematic constructions of gender and class su...

The creation of social value: can an online health community reduce rural-urban health disparities?

Abstract: The striking growth of online communities in recent years has sparked significant interest in understanding and quantifying benefits of participation. While research has begun to document the econo...

The Quantified Self

Abstract: With the advent of digital devices and software, self-tracking practices have gained new adherents and have spread into a wide array of social domains. The Quantified Self movement has emerged to promote 'self-knowledge through numbers'. In this groundbreaking book Deborah Lupton critically analyses the social, cultural and political dimensions of contemporary self-tracking and identifies the concepts of selfhood and human embodiment and the value of the data that underpin them. The book incorporates discussion of the consolations and frustrations of self-tracking, as well as about the proliferating ways in which people's personal data are now used beyond their private rationales. Lupton outlines how the information that is generated through self-tracking is taken up and repurposed for commercial, governmental, managerial and research purposes. In the relationship between personal data practices and big data politics, the implications of self-tracking are becoming ever more crucial.

Aesthetic and spiritual values of ecosystems: recognising the ontological and axiological plurality of cultural ecosystem 'services'.

Abstract: This paper explores spiritual and aesthetic cultural values associated with ecosystems. We argue that these values are not best captured by instrumental or consequentialist thinking, and they are grounded in conceptions of nature that differ from the ecosystem services conceptual framework. To support our case, we engage with theories of the aesthetic and the spiritual, sample the discourse of ‘wilderness’, and provide empirical evidence from the recent UK National Ecosystem Assessment Follow-on Phase. We observe that accounts of spiritual and aesthetic value in Western culture are diverse and expressed through different media. We recognise that humans do benefit from their aesthetic and spiritual experiences of nature. However, aesthetic and spiritual understandings of the value of nature lead people to develop moral responsibilities towards nature and these are more significant than aesthetic and spiritual benefits from nature. We conclude that aesthetic and spiritual values challenge economic conceptions of ecosystems and of value (including existence value), and that an analysis of cultural productions and a plural-values approach are needed to evidence them appropriately for decision-making.

Stakeholder Relationships and Social Welfare: A Behavioral Theory of Contributions to Joint Value Creation

Abstract: Firms play a crucial role in furthering social welfare through their ability to foster stakeholders’ contributions to joint value creation—value creation that involves a public good dilemma arising from high task and outcome interdependence—leading to what economists have labeled the “team production problem.” We build on relational models theory to examine how individual stakeholders’ contributions to joint value creation are shaped by stakeholders’ mental representations of their relationships with the other participants in value creation, and how these mental representations are affected by the perceived behavior of the firm. Stakeholder theorists typically contrast a broadly defined “relational” approach to stakeholder management with a “transactional” approach based on the price mechanism—and argue that the former is more likely than the latter to contribute to social welfare. Our theory supports this prediction for joint value creation but also implies that the dichotomy on which it is based is too ...

The Politics of Sin: Drugs, Alcohol and Public Policy : Drugs, Alcohol and Public Policy

Abstract: This work demonstrates the value of a multi-method approach to public policy analysis, arguing that descriptive historical studies, quantitative historical studies and cross-sectional quantitative studies are essentially compatible.

Small business social responsibility

Abstract: This article seeks to expand business and society research in a number of ways. Its primary purpose is to redraw two core corporate social responsibility (CSR) theories (stakeholder theory and Carroll’s CSR pyramid), enhancing their relevance for small business. This redrawing is done by the application of the ethic of care, informed by the value of feminist perspectives and the extant empirical research on small business social responsibility. It is proposed that the expanded versions of core theory have wider relevance, value, and implications beyond the small firm context. The theorization of small business social responsibility enables engagement with the mainstream of CSR research as well as making a contribution to small business studies in scholarly, policy, and practice terms.

Trauma-informed mental healthcare in the UK: what is it and how can we further its development?

Abstract: Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe and explain trauma-informed approaches (TIAs) to mental health. It outlines evidence on the link between trauma and mental health, explains the principles of TIAs and their application in mental health and explores the extent to which TIAs are impacting in the UK. Design/methodology/approach The approach is a conceptual account of TIAs including a consideration of why they are important, what they are and how they can become more prevalent in the UK. This is supported by a narrative overview of literature on effectiveness and a scoping of the spread of TIAs in the UK. Findings There is strong and growing evidence of a link between trauma and mental health, as well as evidence that the current mental health system can retraumatise trauma survivors. There is also emerging evidence that trauma-informed systems are effective and can benefit staff and trauma survivors. Whilst TIAs are spreading beyond the USA where they developed, they have made little impact in the UK. The reasons for this are explored and ways of overcoming barriers to implementation discussed. Originality/value This paper – authored by trauma survivors and staff – describes an innovative approach to mental health service provision that, it is argued, could have immense benefits for staff and service users alike.

Engaged and Productive Misfits: How Job Crafting and Leisure Activity Mitigate the Negative Effects of Value Incongruence

Abstract: The work life of “misfits”—employees whose important values are incongruent with the values of their organization—represents an under-researched area of the person–environment fit literature. The u...

Statistical mechanics of ecological systems: Neutral theory and beyond

Abstract: The simplest theories often have much merit and many limitations, and, in this vein, the value of neutral theory (NT) of biodiversity has been the subject of much debate over the past 15 years. NT was proposed at the turn of the century by Stephen Hubbell to explain several patterns observed in the organization of ecosystems. Among ecologists, it had a polarizing effect: There were a few ecologists who were enthusiastic, and there were a larger number who firmly opposed it. Physicists and mathematicians, instead, welcomed the theory with excitement. Indeed, NT spawned several theoretical studies that attempted to explain empirical data and predicted trends of quantities that had not yet been studied. While there are a few reviews of NT oriented toward ecologists, the goal here is to review the quantitative aspects of NT and its extensions for physicists who are interested in learning what NT is, what its successes are, and what important problems remain unresolved. Furthermore, this review could also be of interest to theoretical ecologists because many potentially interesting results are buried in the vast NT literature. It is proposed to make these more accessible by extracting them and presenting them in a logical fashion. The focus of this review is broader than NT: new, more recent approaches for studying ecological systems and how one might introduce realistic non-neutral models are also discussed.

Should We Require Every New Venture to Be a Hybrid Organization

Abstract: Critics of entrepreneurial capitalism have argued that entrepreneurship creates dysfunction in individuals, families, communities, and society because entrepreneurs neglect social and environmental dimensions of value in favour of financial value creation. By way of contrast, hybrid organizations, such as Benefit Corporations, are created explicitly to address social and environmental objectives in addition to their financial objective. Therefore, in this paper we explore the consequences of a world of blended value in which every new venture is required to be a hybrid organization. In doing so, we reveal the boundary conditions of current social criticism levied against entrepreneurship and suggest that blended value may best be relegated to the role of ideal or guideline as opposed to normative or legal obligation.

Globalization as Governmentality

Abstract: At the 2002 International Sociological Association meeting, globalization was described in one session as "the story we all know." It was suggested that whereas economists tend to develop empiricist accounts of globalization focused on outcomes, scholars of international relations and international political economy were to be commended for their move toward feminist and postpositivist accounts focused on ideas, identities, and culture. Yet in the discussion that ensued it became apparent that, despite such theoretical innovations, the story of globalization itself remained remarkably unaltered. The shared collective conception was one of epochal macrolevel change. The intellectual challenge was to specify more clearly the content of this change, to develop more rigorous accounts of hegemonic projects and institutions, to examine the consequences for different places and people, and to identify how globalization was being resisted. Our argument is that while there is considerable diversity in the way that globalization is understood, above and beyond this, the major international relations and international political economy theories are linked by a certain sociological and political realism. Put simply, globalization is treated as a transformation in the very structure of the world. This is true not just of mainstream accounts, but even many of those employing critical perspectives. The task of the researcher is to capture the substance of change along axes such as speed, space, time, territoriality, sovereignty, and identity. We suggest a useful alternative is to consider globalization as a "governmentality," that is, as a governmental rationality.1 More specifically, we are interested in what we call elsewhere "global governmentality."2 This article demonstrates the value of this approach in terms of four key

Beyond rarity: the paths of luxury desire. How luxury brands grow yet remain desirable

Abstract: Purpose Luxury is a growing sector worldwide. This creates a major managerial challenge: How can luxury brands prevent becoming a victim of their own success? Once objective rarity is lost, what other levers still sustain desire for these luxury brands, nurture their dream and, thus, prevent the dilution of desirability created by their growing penetration and sales? Design/methodology/approach Based on 1,286 actual luxury consumers interviewed about 12 highly known and successful luxury brands on 42 experiential and perceptual items, a PLS hierarchical fourth-order latent variables model unveils the paths of luxury dream building. Findings The authors have identified how, beyond mere physical rarity and very high quality, eight experiential and perceptual levers fuel luxury desirability through two structural paths: selection and seduction. Research limitations/implications The concept of luxury is associated to rarity. But to grow, luxury brands need to abandon mere scarcity and selectivity (value created by limitation of production, highly selective distribution and selection of customers) and switch instead to an “abundant rarity”, where feelings of privilege are attached to the brand itself, seducing through its experiential facets, pricing, prestige and the world it symbolizes. Practical implications Luxury executives can use this paper as a compass to manage, sustain and monitor their brand desirability, all along the brand’s growth, as it moves away from being niche and rare. Social implications Considering the growing social diffusion of the need for luxury in different strata of the population, this paper reveals the levers of the attractiveness of the mega-brands of luxury. Originality/value This paper addresses the main problem of the luxury industry: How to grow yet remain desirable. It is based on 1,286 actual luxury buyers and 12 actual brands. Thanks to PLS modelization, the structure of the levers of brand desirability is revealed.

Extending actor participation in value creation: an institutional view

Abstract: This article explores how seemingly distinct actors contribute to value creation and evaluation in a fundamentally similar way. It shows that the division of actors into dichotomies such as ‘producers’ and ‘consumers,’ ‘paying’ and ‘non-paying’ customers, and ‘adopters’ and ‘non-adopters,’ is based on narrow, unidirectional, transactional, and dyadic views on value creation and delivery. The article highlights the limitations of these views and draws on a service ecosystems perspective and its broader notion of co-created and contextual value to overcome these limitations. More specifically, the article, by connecting two frameworks (markets-as-practice and institutional work), extends a generic actor-to-actor conceptualization of value creation, in showing that all economic and social actors participate in value creation in a fundamentally similar way. That is, they enact value co-creation practices and simultaneously shape these practices by creating, maintaining and disrupting the institutions that gui...

Implications of human value shift and persistence for biodiversity conservation

Abstract: Large-scale change in human values and associated behavior change is believed by some to be the ultimate solution to achieve global biodiversity conservation. Yet little is known about the dynamics of values. We contribute to this area of inquiry by examining the trajectory of values affecting views of wildlife in North America. Using data from a 19-state study in the United States and global data from the Schwartz Value Survey, we explored questions of value persistence and change and the nature of attitudinal responses regarding wildlife conservation issues. We found support, based on subjects' ancestry, for the supposition that domination is a prevalent American value orientation toward wildlife that has origins in European Judeo-Christian traditions. Independent of that effect, we also found indications of change. Modernization is contributing to a shift from domination to mutualism value orientations, which is fostering attitudes less centered on human interests and seemingly more consistent with a biocentric philosophy. Our findings suggest that if value shift could be achieved in a purposeful way, then significant and widespread behavior change believed necessary for long-term conservation success may indeed be possible. In particular, greater emphasis on mutualism values may help provide the context for more collaborative approaches to support future conservation efforts. However, given the societal forces at play, it is not at all clear that human-engineered value shift is tenable. Instead of developing strategies aimed at altering values, it may be more productive to create strategies that recognize and work within the boundaries of existing values. Whereas values appear to be in a period of flux, it will be difficult to predict future trends without a better understanding of value formation and shift, particularly under conditions of rapid social-ecological change.

A science of loss

Abstract: Avoiding losses from climate change requires socially engaged research that explains what people value highly, how climate change imperils these phenomena, and strategies for embracing and managing grief

Both/and leadership

Abstract: Leaders face a multitude of strategic paradoxes-contradictory pressures that are too often viewed as "either/or" choices. There are "innovation paradoxes," in which the pursuit of new offerings and processes conflicts with the mandate to sustain the tried and true. There are "globalization paradoxes," which involve tensions between local imperatives and boundary-crossing integration. And there are "obligation paradoxes," when the goal of maximizing profits for shareholders clashes with the desire to generate benefits for a broader group of stakeholders. The authors argue that organizational success depends on simultaneously addressing such conflicting demands, not choosing between them. Leaders need to become comfortable with multiple truths and inconsistency. They need to assume that resources are ample rather than scarce. And they need to embrace change instead of seeking stability. All of this will help organizations reach a state of dynamic equilibrium, wherein paradoxes don't impede progress--they spur it. And the way to tap the potential of paradox is to both separate and connect opposing forces: Managers must pull apart the organization's goals and value each of them individually, while also finding linkages and synergies across goals.

Experimental Economics: Reply

Abstract: More than in any particular method of inquiry, I think the hallmark of science is to be found in a constructively skeptical attitude toward knowledge.' The more fundamental are the concepts and assumptions of a science, the easier it is to take them for granted and to abandon this skepticism. In this spirit, Ronald Heiner (1985) is correct in emphasizing that the "knowledge" obtained from the study of the performance of experimental markets is only as secure as the classical preference model used to induce prespecified value structures on the agents in such markets. If the purpose of an experiment is to test a theory (for example, supply and demand), and the theory is not "falsified" by the test, this in no way supports any premise of the theory which was also a premise of the experimental design. When we falsify a theory, the implication is that one or more of its assumptions about the behavior of economic agents (maximization of expected utility, commonly shared (homogeneous) expectations, risk aversion, zero subjective costs of transacting, etc.) is in question, and the immediate task is to modify the suspected behavioral assumptions of the original theory. Other assumptions-such as that agents have well-defined preferences, or know the probability distribution from which other agent values were drawn-are not brought into question by the experiment because the experimental design reproduced (or should have) the environment posited by the theory being tested. When testing formal market theories in this way, we should always be aware of the fact that we are studying behavior within the context of our representations of the economic environment. If any of these representations is wrong, then our studies have only increased our self-knowledge, not our knowledge of things (natural economic processes). If we are to increase our knowledge of things, then our ultimate aim should aspire to more than discovering that the behavioral *Department of Economics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721. 1 The principal contribution of Popper's falsificationist methodology is, I believe, the influential attempt to develop a formal logic of skeptical inquiry. That the attempt has failed, in the sense that it has produced no defensible codified set of procedures that yield a science of scientific method (happily it would appear that all such attempts will fail), should not detract from the disciplinary value of the falsificationist perspective in approaching scientific questions. Its value to the experimentalist is to force him to ask "How can I design an experiment with the property that the set of potentially observable outcomes can be partitioned into those that are consistent with one (or a given) theory and those that are consistent with other theory(ies) (or inconsistent with the given theory)?" That experimental life is such that his effort is about as likely to fail as to succeed by no means detracts from the value of the exercise. Its value to the theorist (if he will just forgo the career-advancing primeval incentive to publish yet another technically tractable extension of the existing theory literature) is to force him to ask "How can I model this question so as to suggest (as Martin Shubik would say) a do-able experiment, and so as to yield observable implications that do not exhaust the set of possible outcomes?" That this effort will often fail does not detract from the value of the exercise. Having said this I would not want to leave the impression that experiments that are fishing expeditions in the laboratory to see what will happen are of no value; seeing what happens can be essential in defining an analyticalempirical research program. Similarly, when a theorist builds (as Buz Brock would say) castles in the air, this is not necessarily useless, for it may lead to more operational forms of theory. We should impute some nonzero probability to the proposition that Feyerabend's "anything goes" posture is right. But at this stage I think it has become pretty obvious where our professional weaknesses are concentrated. Economists, while spouting the rhetoric (Donald McClosky, 1983) of the falsificationist, are in fact verificationist to the core. We all do it. We take a proposition, conjecture, or theory, then search for supportive historical or empirical examples. As everyone ought to know, seek and ye are likely to find, whether one is a "Keynesian" or a "supply sider." What is not sufficiently appreciated is that this verificationist grubbing is a prescientific exercise in which one asks whether there is any supporting evidence, and how difficult it is to find; if there is none or if it is pretty hard to uncover, it suggests abandonment in the prescientific womb.

Value co-destruction in interfirm relationships: The impact of actor engagement styles

Abstract: Value co-destruction is emerging as an important way to conceptualize non-positive outcomes from actor-to-actor interactions. However, current research in this area neither offers a clear way to understand how value co-destruction manifests nor does it consider the role of actor engagement behaviors. Drawing on a case study in the aerospace industry, the present study begins by identifying and describing two ways in which actor perceptions of value co-destruction form: goal prevention and net deficits. Next, the study identifies and describes nine actor engagement behaviors that moderate actor experiences of value co-destruction. The study also unpacks these concepts at both the actor-to-actor and service ecosystem levels. The article concludes with implications for marketing theory and practice.