Strings Attached

Erscheinungsjahr 2011
ISBN: 978-0-691-15160-1
Verlag: Princeton University Press

Buch, Englisch, 200 Seiten, Format (B × H): 164 mm x 242 mm, Gewicht: 458 g

Incentives can be found everywhere--in schools, businesses, factories, and government--influencing people's choices about almost everything, from financial decisions and tobacco use to exercise and child rearing. So long as people have a choice, incentives seem innocuous. But Strings Attached demonstrates that when incentives are viewed as a kind of power rather than as a form of exchange, many ethical questions arise: How do incentives affect character and institutional culture? Can incentives be manipulative or exploitative, even if people are free to refuse them? What are the responsibilities of the powerful in using incentives? Ruth Grant shows that, like all other forms of power, incentives can be subject to abuse, and she identifies their legitimate and illegitimate uses. Grant offers a history of the growth of incentives in early twentieth-century America, identifies standards for judging incentives, and examines incentives in four areas--plea bargaining, recruiting medical research subjects, International Monetary Fund loan conditions, and motivating students. In every case, the analysis of incentives in terms of power yields strikingly different and more complex judgments than an analysis that views incentives as trades, in which the desired behavior is freely exchanged for the incentives offered. Challenging the role and function of incentives in a democracy, Strings Attached questions whether the penchant for constant incentivizing undermines active, autonomous citizenship. Readers of this book are sure to view the ethics of incentives in a new light.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Grant, Ruth W.

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Unternehmensorganisation, Corporate Responsibility Unternehmensethik
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Verhaltensökonomik
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Angewandte Ethik & Soziale Verantwortung Wirtschaftsethik, Unternehmensethik
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ethik, Moralphilosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xv

CHAPTER ONE: Why Worry about Incentives? 1

CHAPTER TWO: Incentives Then and Now The Clock and the Engineer 14

CHAPTER THREE: "Incentives Talk" What Are Incentives Anyway? 31

CHAPTER FOUR: Ethical and Not So Ethical Incentives 45

CHAPTER FIVE: Applying Standards, Making Judgments 60

CHAPTER SIX: Getting Down to Cases

--Plea Bargaining 76

--Recruiting Medical Research Subjects 86

--IMF Loan Conditions 101

-- Motivating Children to Learn 111

CHAPTER SEVEN: Beyond Voluntariness 123

CHAPTER EIGHT: A Different Kind of Conversation 133

Notes 141

References 171

Index 189

Über Autor(innen)

Grant, Ruth W.
Ruth W. Grant is professor of political science and philosophy and a senior fellow of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. She is the author of "John Locke's Liberalism" and "Hypocrisy and Integrity".