The Motivations of Anonymous Whistle-Blowers: The Case of Federal Employees

1988 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcia P. Miceli ◽  
Bonnie L. Roach ◽  
Janet P. Near
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Bystander Intervention ◽  
Federal Employees ◽  
Whistle Blowing ◽  
Decision Points ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Unidentified Source ◽  
Organizational Wrongdoing ◽  
Do So

The “Deep Throat” case during Watergate — in which a well-placed unidentified source called attention to governmental wrongdoing — exemplifies the complexities created by anonymous whistle-blowing. What anonymous whistle-blowers may lose in credibility they gain in protection from reprisal. The trade-offs facing the potential whistle-blower who decides to remain unidentified are examined empirically using survey data from 8500 federal employees. Propositions derived from a model of bystander intervention (Latané & Darley, 1970) are investigated, with consideration of three decision points: whether the observer of organizational wrongdoing should blow the whistle, whether the whistle-blower should act anonymously, and whether the whistle-blower should report the wrong-doing through internal channels or to someone outside the organization. The results suggest a compounding of the last two decisions: in fact, the choice of channels represents one of four distinct strategies. Whistle-blowers may be anonymous or identified with either external or internal channels, but the conditions under which they do so vary dramatically. The whistle-blower who, like “Deep Throat,” chooses to use an anonymous external channel faces a series of interrelated and complex decisions.

scholarly journals Persuasion: The Art of Changing Worldviews

2019 ◽  
Vol 109 (3) ◽  
pp. 996-1031 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Galperti
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Bayesian Framework ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient ◽  
Disconfirming Evidence ◽  
Do So

Persuaders often face the task of changing their listeners’ world-view, which may involve conveying evidence that disconfirms that view. It has been shown, however, that people are often reluctant to change their worldviews. These aspects of persuasion cannot be captured in the standard Bayesian framework. The paper identifies the constraints, opportunities, and trade-offs of persuading people to change worldview. It finds necessary and sufficient conditions under which it is optimal for persuaders to do so. It also shows when and how they conceal disconfirming evidence and take advantage of their listener’s existing worldview. (JEL D82, D83, D91)

Economic Principles for Medicare Reform

2019 ◽  
Vol 686 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-92
Author(s):  
Amitabh Chandra ◽  
Craig Garthwaite
Keyword(s):  
Pay For Performance ◽  
Medicare Advantage ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Market Prices ◽  
Economic Framework ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Medicare Program ◽  
Commercial Market ◽  
New Treatments ◽  
Do So

In this article, we develop an economic framework for Medicare reform that highlights trade-offs that reform proposals should grapple with, but often ignore. Central to our argument is a tension in administratively set prices, which may improve short-term efficiency but do so at the expense of dynamic efficiency (slowing innovations in new treatments). The smaller the Medicare program is relative to the commercial market, the less important this is; but in a world where there are no market prices or the private sector is very small, the task of setting prices that are dynamically correct becomes more complex. Reforming Medicare should focus on greater incentives to increase competition between Medicare Advantage plans, which necessitates a role for government in ensuring competition; premium support; less use of regulated prices; and less appetite for countless “pay for performance” schemes. We apply this framework to evaluate Medicare for All proposals.

scholarly journals Male-only care and cuckoldry in black coucals: does parenting hamper sex life?

2019 ◽  
Vol 286 (1900) ◽  
pp. 20182789 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ignas Safari ◽  
Wolfgang Goymann ◽  
Hanna Kokko
Keyword(s):  
Parental Care ◽  
Paternal Care ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Life Care ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Mating Opportunities ◽  
Siring Success ◽  
Theoretical Considerations ◽  
Operational Sex Ratios ◽  
Do So

Providing parental care often reduces additional mating opportunities. Paternal care becomes easier to understand if trade-offs between mating and caring remain mild. The black coucalCentropus grilliicombines male-only parental care with 50% of all broods containing young sired by another male. To understand how much caring for offspring reduces a male's chance to sire additional young in other males' nests, we matched the production of extra-pair young in each nest with the periods during which potential extra-pair sires were either caring for offspring themselves or when they had no own offspring to care for. We found that males which cared for a clutch were not fully excluded from the pool of competitors for siring young in other males' nests. Instead, the relative siring success showed a temporary dip. Males were approximately 17% less likely to sire young in other males' nests while they were incubating, about 48% less likely to do so while feeding nestlings, followed by 26% when feeding fledglings, compared to the success of males that currently did not care for offspring. These results suggest that real-life care situations by males may involve trade-off structures that differ from, and are less strict than those frequently employed in theoretical considerations of operational sex ratios, sex roles and parenting decisions.

Many Ways to be Right: Cross-Pressured Voters in Western Europe

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Noam Gidron
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Cultural Issues ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Western European ◽  
Mass Attitudes ◽  
The Right ◽  
Base Of Support ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract Mainstream parties in Western Europe are increasingly struggling to hold together their base of support. As a lens for exploring this changing electoral landscape, this article focuses on the growing share of the electorate that is cross-pressured between conservative and progressive attitudes on economic and cultural issues. It argues that a stable asymmetry characterizes Western European mass attitudes: while support for the left is common among voters with progressive attitudes on both issues, it is enough to be conservative on one issue to turn right. Analyzing survey data collected from 1990 to 2017, the study shows that cross-pressures are resolved in favor of the right and examines the trade-offs this poses to center-right parties. These findings contribute to debates on electoral dealignment and realignment and shed light on the electoral choices of the center-right.

Secularisation, R.I.P.? Nonsense! The ‘Rush Hour Away from the Gods’ and the Decline of Religion in Contemporary Japan

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Reader
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Japanese Case ◽  
Extensive Survey ◽  
Do So ◽  
Religious Decline

Abstract Sociologists of religion such as Rodney Stark and José Casanova have pronounced secularisation theories to be dead or a ‘myth,’ and in so doing they have often cited Japan as an example of the vigour of religion in the modern world. This article refutes their claims by examining the contemporary Japanese religious situation and showing that, far from being vibrant, religion, whether organised, institutional, or related to popular and folk practices, is in decline. It draws on extensive survey data to show that levels of faith, adherence and practice have decreased significantly, and that they do so especially in conjunction with rising levels of urbanisation and education—two conditions identified in secularisation theory as associated with religious decline. The study examines counter-claims that some areas (notably pilgrimage and ‘spirituality’) are growing in Japan, and shows that the reverse is true. Pilgrimages are losing support while there is evidence that the ‘turn to spirituality’—cited by some scholars as a replacement for organised religion—has petered out in Japan. Thus there is a strong secularising tendency in Japan that refutes the claims of those who wish to bury secularisation theory; as the Japanese case shows, it remains a potent force in the modern world.

scholarly journals Integrating citizen science data with expert surveys increases accuracy and spatial extent of species distribution models

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
O.J. Robinson ◽  
V. Ruiz-Gutierrez ◽  
M.D. Reynolds ◽  
G.H. Golet ◽  
M. Strimas-Mackey ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Citizen Science ◽  
Species Distribution ◽  
Central Valley ◽  
Habitat Associations ◽  
Biological Information ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Science Data ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Wide Range

AbstractInformation on species’ habitat associations and distributions, across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, are a fundamental source of ecological knowledge. However, collecting biological information at relevant scales if often cost prohibitive, although it is essential for framing the broader context of more focused research and conservation efforts. Citizen-science data has been signaled as an increasingly important source of biological information needed to fill in data gaps needed to make more comprehensive and robust inferences on species distributions. However, there are perceived trade-offs of combining highly structured, scientific survey data with largely unstructured, citizen-science data. As a result, the focus of most methodological advances to combine these sources of information has been on treating these sources as independent. The degree to which each source of information is allowed to directly inform a common underlying process (e.g. species distribution) depends on the perceived quality of the data. In this paper, we explore these trade-offs by applying a simplified approach of filtering citizen-science data to resemble structured survey data, and analyze both sources of data under a common framework. To accomplish this, we explored ways of integrating high-resolution survey data on shorebirds in the northern Central Valley of California with observations in eBird for the entire region that were filtered to improve their quality. The integration of survey data with the filtered citizen-science data in eBird resulted in improved inference and predictive ability, and increased the extent and accuracy of inferences on shorebirds for the Central Valley. The structured surveys were found to improve the overall accuracy of ecological inference based only on citizen-science data, by increasing the representation of data collected from high quality habitats for shorebirds (e.g. rice fields). The practical approach we have shown for data integration can be also be used to improve the efficiency of designing biological surveys in the context of larger, citizen-science monitoring efforts, ultimately reducing the financial and time expenditures typically required of monitoring programs and focused research. The simple processing and filtering method we present can be used to integrate other types of data (e.g. camera traps) with more localized efforts (e.g. research projects), ultimately improving our ecological knowledge on the distribution and habitat associations of species of conservation concern worldwide.

What You See Is Not Always What You Get: Bargaining before an Audience under Multiparty Government

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (4) ◽  
pp. 1138-1154 ◽  
Author(s):  
LANNY W. MARTIN ◽  
GEORG VANBERG
Keyword(s):  
Original Data ◽  
Portfolio Allocation ◽  
Parliamentary Democracies ◽  
Coalition Governments ◽  
Relative Success ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Party Elites ◽  
Simple Heuristics ◽  
Do So

AbstractParty elites in coalition governments are acutely aware that the deals they strike will be critically evaluated by their supporters, and that they risk losing support if they are perceived as ineffective negotiators. This has a powerful influence on the bargains parties strike. Because most supporters are unaware of the complex aspects of bargains and instead rely on simple heuristics to evaluate their most visible features, parties have incentives to meet supporter expectations primarily on easily observable outcomes. To do so, they make trade-offs on less observable outcomes. This implies that the more visible features of a bargain typically do not accurately reflect the relative success of parties in coalition negotiations. We evaluate our argument using original data on the office rewards and policy risks of portfolio allocation in 16 parliamentary democracies. Our findings support our argument, and they have important implications for the nature of representation under multiparty government.

scholarly journals Moral Choice When Harming Is Unavoidable

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (10) ◽  
pp. 1294-1301
Author(s):  
Jonathan Z. Berman ◽  
Daniella Kupor
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Harm Avoidance ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Moral Choice ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Do So

Past research suggests that actors often seek to minimize harm at the cost of maximizing social welfare. However, this prior research has confounded a desire to minimize the negative impact caused by one’s actions (harm aversion) with a desire to avoid causing any harm whatsoever (harm avoidance). Across six studies ( N = 2,152), we demonstrate that these two motives are distinct. When decision-makers can completely avoid committing a harmful act, they strongly prefer to do so. However, harming cannot always be avoided. Often, decision-makers must choose between committing less harm for less benefit and committing more harm for more benefit. In these cases, harm aversion diminishes substantially, and decision-makers become increasingly willing to commit greater harm to obtain greater benefits. Thus, value trade-offs that decision-makers refuse to accept when it is possible to completely avoid committing harm can suddenly become desirable when some harm must be committed.

Multiculturalism and Entrepreneurial Intentions: Understanding the Mediating Role of Cognitions

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 426-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ratan J. S. Dheer ◽  
Tomasz Lenartowicz
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
New Ventures ◽  
Critical Factor ◽  
Entrepreneurial Intentions ◽  
Cognitive Factors ◽  
Identity Integration ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
Do So

Biculturals, or people who identify with two or more cultures, are said to play an important role in economic development by starting new ventures. However, little research has theorized or analyzed the factors that influence their propensity to do so. Based on an identity integrationist perspective, we contribute to filling this gap. We hypothesize that identity integration is a critical factor that influences entrepreneurial intentions of bicultural individuals. In addition, we hypothesize that cognitive and metacognitive cultural intelligence mediate this relationship. Empirical analyses based on survey data supported our hypothesized arguments. The findings provide guidance on the role of psychological and cognitive factors in influencing intentions.

Covid-19: A Trade-off between Political Economy and Ethics

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrique Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Policy Measure ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Ethical Trade ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Do So

Abstract This paper investigates the trade-off between economics and ethics applying them to “lockdowns” as a policy measure to counter the Covid-19-pandemic. This is an academic research on the nature and mechanism of trade-offs in so far as they apply to decision making. In the course of the line of inquiry pursued here, several different ways of trading off are assessed. In applying them to the pandemics, each yield a different answer to the adequacy of lockdowns as measures against the pandemic. The economic trade-off found “optimalcy” conditions, the utilitarian-ethical trade-off failed to do so revealing that there is a problem using “scientific evidence” as basis for such a trade-off. The value-ethical trade-off found out that lockdowns do not pass the test of proportionality within the usual constitutional framework.

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