Exploring commitment in peer-to-peer exchanges: the case of timebanks

Despite the growing trend of peer-to-peer (P2P) exchanges, there is a lack of studies that examine the determinants of the relationship between exchanging partners and the role of commitment in particular. This is especially necessary as P2P exchanges enact a different type of reciprocity from that of ‘business-to-consumers’. Thus, exploring P2P exchanges allows a better understanding of the drivers of commitment and the relationship of commitment with reciprocity. This qualitative and exploratory study examines the case of timebanks (TBs). Drawing from 40 in-depth interviews with TB managers and users along with participant observation, this study finds that commitment is a complex and multidimensional construct that may vary drastically depending on the distinct foci of commitment, the dual roles that users perform (as providers or as recipients), the type of exchange system and the notion of reciprocity underlying the exchange system.     

The Relevance and Value of Confucianism in Contemporary Business Ethics

This article examines the relevance and value of Confucian Ethics to contemporary Business Ethics by comparing their respective perspectives and approaches towards business activities within the modern capitalist framework, the principle of reciprocity and the concept of human virtues. Confucian Ethics provides interesting parallels with contemporary Western-oriented Business Ethics. At the same, it diverges from contemporary Business Ethics in some significant ways. Upon an examination of philosophical texts as well as empirical studies, it is argued that Confucian Ethics is able to provide some unique philosophical and intellectual perspectives in order to forge a richer understanding and analysis of the field of contemporary Business Ethics. Gary Kok Yew Chan is Assistant Professor of Law at Singapore Management University. Apart from Business Law, he teaches Ethics and Social Responsibility. He has obtained an LL.B (National University of Singapore) and LL.M (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) respectively and has published in several reputable law journals including Journal of Business Law, Cambridge Law Journal, Australian Journal of Asian Law, Hong Kong Law Journal and Singapore Journal of Legal Studies. In addition, he holds an M.A. in Southeast Asian Studies (National University of Singapore) and a B.A. in Philosophy (University of London).     

隐性与显性的优势互补——内容营销与传统广告的全方位解析

内容营销作为一种隐性的广告形式，已经成为显性传统广告的有利补充，但二者又有着本质的差别。内容营销所要传达的广告信息往往是隐藏在娱乐内容之中，在潜移默化之中引起消费者对品牌的共鸣，这是内容营销与传统广告的最大不同。同时，由于二者表现形式的不同，导致广告主的传播策略、广告创意空间及广告效果测评等方面也存在很大差别。本文通过对内容营销与传统广告的全方位解析，探求二者如何实现优势互补。     

A study of employee affective organizational commitment and retention in Pakistan: the roles of psychological contract breach and norms of reciprocity

Abstract

Social exchange theory and notions of reciprocity have long been assumed to explain the relationship between psychological contract breach and important employee outcomes. To date, however, there has been no explicit testing of these assumptions. This research, therefore, explores the mediating role of negative, generalized, and balanced reciprocity, in the relationships between psychological contract breach and employees’ affective organizational commitment and turnover intentions. A survey of 247 Pakistani employees of a large public university was analyzed using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping techniques, and provided excellent support for our model. As predicted, psychological contract breach was positively related to negative reciprocity norms and negatively related to generalized and balanced reciprocity norms. Negative and generalized (but not balanced) reciprocity were negatively and positively (respectively) related to employees’ affective organizational commitment and fully mediated the relationship between psychological contract breach and affective organizational commitment. Moreover, affective organizational commitment fully mediated the relationship between generalized and negative reciprocity and employees’ turnover intentions. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Basic income,liberal neutrality,socialism, and work

Liberal critics often object to basic income (BI) on the grounds that it violates reciprocity and is biased toward those who choose voluntarily to opt out of work and thus violate the principle of liberal neutrality toward conceptions of the good life. In the first part of this paper I argue that liberal neutrality favors BI. Marxist critics of BI are less likely to accept liberal neutrality, but I argue in the second part that the argument for BI in the first part applies with equal force to Marxist objections that BI is unfairly exploitative of workers. Marxists are also less likely to accept current labor market trends, seeing socialism as affording more opportunity for guaranteeing everyone a right to decent work, and suspecting BI of making the unfair inequalities of capitalism a little more palatable while diverting attention from a more equitable socialist alternative. I argue that BI is not incompatible with socialism or Marxism, and should not be opposed to but rather combined with strategies for full employment.     

Are Family Transfers Crowded Out by Public Transfers?

We give an account of an overlapping–generations experiment with multiple families in which voluntary transfers can take the form of support to the elderly or grants to children. Support to the old is a purely intergenerational (intra–family) transfer, whereas grants to children also involve an element of intra–generational (inter–family) redistribution through a compulsory pension system. Our data show that higher compulsory inter–family transfers lead subjects to place relatively more emphasis on support instead of grants: grants are crowded out, but support is not significantly affected. The efficiency of voluntary transfers increases, however. Furthermore, if subjects give transfers, they do not use tokens of direct reciprocity; evidence of indirect reciprocity in transfer behavior can only be obtained for the case where compulsory transfers are high.
JEL classification : C 91; H 55     

Microfoundations for stakeholder theory: Managing stakeholders with heterogeneous motives

Instrumental stakeholder theory proposes a positive relationship between fairness toward stakeholders and firm performance. Yet, some firms are successful with an arms‐length approach to stakeholder management, based on bargaining power rather than fairness. We address this puzzle by relaxing the assumption that all stakeholders care about fairness. Empirical evidence from behavioral economics and social psychology suggests that firms face a population of potential stakeholders that consists not only of so‐called ‘reciprocators,’ who do care about fairness, but also of self‐regarding stakeholders, who do not. We propose that a fairness approach is more effective in attracting, retaining, and motivating reciprocal stakeholders to create value, while an arms‐length approach is more effective in motivating self‐regarding stakeholders and in attracting and retaining self‐regarding stakeholders with high bargaining power. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Can receiving managerial responses induce more user reviewing effort? A mixed method investigation in hotel industry

The purpose of this study is to explore factors contributing to users' reviewing effort in the online review platform and understand the mechanism behind the effect. Based on a mixed method including secondary data analysis and experimental data analysis, the results indicate the following. (1) A user receiving more managerial responses tends to exert more reviewing effort. (2) The number of high-quality user opinions (i.e., expert reviews) for a hotel negatively moderates the influence of the number of managerial responses on user reviewing effort. (3) The sense of reciprocity mediates the influence of the number of managerial responses on future reviewing effort. (4) The mediation process is attenuated amongst users facing numerous high-quality user opinions. This study contributes to the literature of managerial response and online user engagement in the context of travel websites.     

Researcher’s guilt: confessions from the darker side of ethnographic consumer research

A reflexive approach to qualitative research seeks to uncover structures of inequality in the research encounter. On the surface, it would seem that ethnographic methods provide the conditions to alleviate this methodological instrumentalism. By employing a confessional account, this paper demonstrates how the paradox of asymmetrical rapport prevents ethnographic work from reaching its collaborative potential. Drawing from insights in an ethnographic enquiry in an arts charity, the author narrates the guilty experiences that arise when researchers reproduce a culture of commodifying informants. This is exemplified through impression management tactics that generate an illusion of mutuality, alternating with more authentic instances of co-participation. The implications of this self-perceived moral violation are discussed for the researched, the researcher and ethnographies of consumption more broadly. The paper contributes to the methodological literature by explaining the potential of confessional accounts as a tool to operationalise reflexive, reciprocal practice, counteracting the demands of a knowledge economy.     

Reciprocity Game

This paper shows that reciprocity comes from the desire to cooperate in finitely repeated prisoner's dilemma game. Before playing the finitely repeated prisoner's dilemma game, players choose the reciprocity level and commit to it, and the reciprocity level is public information. There are T equilibria if the prisoner's dilemma game is repeated for T periods, and each equilibrium is associated with different levels of cooperation. Further, if players choose their reciprocity levels sequentially, then the most cooperative equilibrium will be the unique equilibrium. However, reciprocity does not matter for the one‐period game and the infinitely repeated game.