scholarly journals When does reputation lie? Dynamic feedbacks between costly signals, social capital and social prominence

Author(s):  
Marion Dumas ◽  
Jessica L. Barker ◽  
Eleanor A. Power

Performing a dramatic act of religious devotion, creating an art exhibit, or releasing a new product are all examples of public acts that signal quality and contribute to building a reputation. Signalling theory predicts that these public displays can reliably reveal quality. However, data from ethnographic work in South India suggests that more prominent individuals gain more from reputation-building religious acts than more marginalized individuals. To understand this phenomenon, we extend signalling theory to include variation in people’s social prominence or social capital, first with an analytical model and then with an agent-based model. We consider two ways in which social prominence/capital may alter signalling: (i) it impacts observers’ priors, and (ii) it alters the signallers’ pay-offs. These two mechanisms can result in both a ‘reputational shield,’ where low quality individuals are able to ‘pass’ as high quality thanks to their greater social prominence/capital, and a ‘reputational poverty trap,’ where high quality individuals are unable to improve their standing owing to a lack of social prominence/capital. These findings bridge the signalling theory tradition prominent in behavioural ecology, anthropology and economics with the work on status hierarchies in sociology, and shed light on the complex ways in which individuals make inferences about others. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling’.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rina Kagawa ◽  
Yukino Baba ◽  
Hideo Tsurushima

BACKGROUND Sharing progress notes as a common social capital is essential in research and education, but the content of progress notes is sensitive and needs to be kept confidential. Publishing actual progress notes are difficult due to privacy concerns. OBJECTIVE This study aims to generate a large repository of pseudo-progress notes of authentic quality. We focused on two requirements for authentic quality: the validity and consistency of the data, from the perspective of medical practice, and the empirical and semantic characteristics of progress notes, such as shorthand styles used for reporting changes in a patient's physical status, long narrative sentences detailing patient anxiety, and interprofessional communications. METHODS We proposed a practical framework that consists of a simulation of the notes and evaluation of the simulated notes. The framework utilized two human cognitive traits: (1) the ability to use imitation to simulate objects with diverse characteristics without background knowledge and (2) the use of comparison as a strategy for deep thinking. This enabled crowd workers to generate a large number of progress notes. Our framework involved three steps. In step 1, crowd workers imitated actual progress notes decomposed into subject data (S), object data (O), and assessment and plan (A/P). These imitated texts were then shuffled and recomposed in S, O, and A/P in order to create simulated progress notes. In step 2, crowd workers identified the characteristics of actual progress notes based on comparisons between actual and dummy progress notes. These characteristics were clustered based on their similarities. Each cluster exhibited the empirical and semantic characteristics of the actual progress notes. Finally, in step 3, the texts from step 1 that exhibited the identified characteristics from step 2 were evaluated as quality-guaranteed progress notes that met the two requirements. All data were preprocessed to protect patient privacy. RESULTS Step 1: By recomposing the 700 imitated texts, 9,856 simulated progress notes were generated. Step 2: 3,938 differences between actual progress notes and dummy progress notes were identified. After clustering, 166 characteristics were evaluated to be appropriate as empirical and semantic characteristics of the actual progress notes. Step 3: 500 crowd workers demonstrated that 83.0% of the simulated progress notes satisfied at least one of the characteristics obtained in step 2. The crowd workers' artificially-reproduced progress notes were evaluated to determine the most realistic, based on four metrics: disease, morpheme, readability, and reality. CONCLUSIONS Our results demonstrated that crowd workers could generate and evaluate highly professional documents. We have made our large repository of high-quality crowdsourced progress notes publicly available, and we encourage their use in the development of medical education and research.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 351-376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yiyi Fan ◽  
Mark Stevenson

Purpose This paper aims to investigate how supply chain risks can be identified in both collaborative and adversarial buyer–supplier relationships (BSRs). Design/methodology/approach This research includes a multiple-case study involving ten Chinese manufacturers with two informants per organisation. Data have been interpreted from a multi-level social capital perspective (i.e. from both an individual and organisational level), supplemented by signalling theory. Findings Buyers use different risk identification strategies or apply the same strategy in different ways according to the BSR type. The impact of organisational social capital on risk identification is contingent upon the degree to which individual social capital is deployed in a way that benefits an individual’s own agenda versus that of the organisation. Signalling theory generally complements social capital theory and helps further understand how buyers can identify risks, especially in adversarial BSRs, e.g. by using indirect signals from suppliers or other supply chain actors to “read between the lines” and anticipate risks. Research limitations/implications Data collection is focussed on China and is from the buyer side only. Future research could explore other contexts and include the supplier perspective. Practical implications The types of relationships that are developed by buyers with their supply chain partners at an organisational and an individual level have implications for risk exposure and how risks can be identified. The multi-level analysis highlights how strategies such as employee rotation and retention can be deployed to support risk identification. Originality/value Much of the extant literature on supply chain risk management is focussed on risk mitigation, whereas risk identification is under-represented. A unique case-based insight is provided into risk identification in different types of BSRs by using a multi-level social capital approach complemented by signalling theory.


2020 ◽  
Vol 88 ◽  
pp. 8-28
Author(s):  
Rimvydas Laužikas ◽  
Darius Plikynas ◽  
Vytautas Dulskis ◽  
Leonidas Sakalauskas ◽  
Arūnas Miliauskas

The impact of cultural processes on personal and social changes is one of the important research issues not only in contemporary social sciences but also for simulation of future development scenarios and evidence-based policy decision making. In the context of the theoretical concept of cultural values, based on the system theory and theory of social capital, the impact of cultural events could be analyzed and simulated by focussing on the construction/deconstruction of social capital, which takes place throughout the actor’s cultural participation. The main goal of this research is the development of measuring metrics, and agent-based simulation model aimed at investigation of the social impact of cultural processes.  This paper provides new insights of modeling the social capital changes in a society and its groups, depending on cultural participation. The proposed measurement metrics provide the measurement facility of three key components: actors, cultural events and events flow and social capital. It provides the initial proof of concept simulation results, - simplified agent-based simulation model showcase. The NetLogo MAS platform is used as a simulation environment.  


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 436-454
Author(s):  
Antonín Vaishar ◽  
Milada Šťastná

Abstract The article analyses the possibilities of development of one of the most peripheral micro-regions of Moravia on the basis of the theory of sustainability. It notes its above-average focus on agriculture and tourism, which is linked to seasonality, lower education of the population, depopulation and higher unemployment. The settlement structure with predominantly very small villages conditions a worse infrastructure, which is partially balanced by a high-quality natural environment. Possible solutions are seen in the focus on qualitative development and support of social capital. The transition to post-productive development and counter-urbanization gives to regions of this type new opportunities associated with the development of housing and tourism.


Author(s):  
Sarah Abdulkareem Salih ◽  
Sumarni Ismail

Since the war in 2003, Baghdad has suffered from different aspects of political, administration, economic ethnic, sectarian, etc. that led to the loss of lives, social capital, destruction of Iraqi infrastructure and important buildings, increased crisis aggravation between different ethnics, as well as the disappearance and destruction of many Baghdad’s open spaces, parks, and recreational places. This paper addresses the issue of social interaction in Baghdad city, resulting from the lack of open spaces, parks, and recreational activities. The objective of this paper is to determine the key factors affecting social interaction of Baghdad residents in the parks of the city. This study employed Creswell recommendations (Creswell, 2014) to design the research methodology in general. A quantitative method was adapted to collect and analyse the data of this study by using a survey, i.e. questionnaires, to assess 270 respondents’ opinion about the issue of the study. Respondents were selected randomly in a single-stage procedure by using a simplified formula (Yamane, 1973). Closed-ended questions were used to collect the data of the study from the Karkh district in Baghdad city. Findings of this study confirmed that the factors and criteria of the parks are essential means to achieve sound social interaction in Baghdad, in which, the most influencing factors towards Karkhs' parks users are crowding of visitors and noise, followed by availability of high quality diverse activities. The results of this study are a useful reference for urban and landscape planners, architects, social psychologists, the Municipality of Baghdad, and researchers in this field.


2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 254-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Bulbulia ◽  
Marcus Frean

AbstractThe following essay explains how religion may evolve to support cooperation among anonymous partners. It first reviews honest signalling theory, and reveals a limitation in the model’s capacity to explain large-scale cooperation. It then suggests that much cooperation is threatened by uncertainty, rather than by cheating. Finally, it explains how signalling theory can be extended to address the problem of cooperation threatened by uncertainty, ‘fragile cooperation’. The resulting extension of signalling theory—called ‘charismatic signalling’—directs attention to potential cooperative benefits from religion’s fascinating and diverse effects on the body. The charismatic signalling model is presented as a ‘how-possibly model’, not as a ‘just-so story’. The model’s interest comes from its ability to organise seemingly unrelated puzzles under a common solution, and to motivate the study of cooperative strategies harboured in shared ecologies.


Author(s):  
L. Marlow

To situate Naṣīḥat al-mulūk in the religious culture of the tenth-century Samanid domains, this chapters explores the orientations and practices of the Samanid amirs from the later ninth century onwards. It portrays the proclivities towards austerity (zuhd) and religious devotion (ʿibāda) of the earlier amirs, especially the generation of Naṣr I and his brothers, the memory of whose conduct significantly shaped Pseudo-Māwardī’s conception of good governance. The chapter presents the efforts of this generation of amirs to develop mutually supportive relations with the religious scholars, and their active participation in the public religious sphere, in, for example, the hearing and transmission of ḥadīth and participation in the funerary rites of prominent scholars. It treats the social prominence and economic means of religious scholars and renunciants, whose support and co-operation Pseudo-Māwardī urges the king to cultivate. The chapter concludes with a discussion of religious developments during the reign of Naṣr II.


Author(s):  
Darius Plikynas ◽  
Rimvydas Laužikas ◽  
Leonidas Sakalauskas ◽  
Arūnas Miliauskas ◽  
Vytautas Dulskis

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (87) ◽  
pp. 20130469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frazer Meacham ◽  
Aaron Perlmutter ◽  
Carl T. Bergstrom

Costly signalling theory is commonly invoked as an explanation for how honest communication can be stable when interests conflict. However, the signal costs predicted by costly signalling models often turn out to be unrealistically high. These models generally assume that signal cost is determinate. Here, we consider the case where signal cost is instead stochastic. We examine both discrete and continuous signalling games and show that, under reasonable assumptions, stochasticity in signal costs can decrease the average cost at equilibrium for all individuals. This effect of stochasticity for decreasing signal costs is a fundamental mechanism that probably acts in a wide variety of circumstances.


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