Strings Attached : Untangling the Ethics of Incentives

Ruth W Grant

ISBN 10: 069116102X / ISBN 13: 9780691161020

Verlag: Princeton University Press Apr 2014, 2014

Beschreibung

Neuware - 'Strings Attached offers a fascinating tour of the history, morality, and unintended consequences of the modern obsession with using incentives to change behavior. Exploring cases from plea bargaining in criminal courts to paying students to earn good grades, Grant compellingly argues that using material incentives to get people to do things they otherwise would not raises important and previously unexamined questions about ethics, power, and character.'--Lynn Stout, University of California, Los Angeles.

Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 9780691161020

Bibliografische Details

• Titel: Strings Attached : Untangling the Ethics of Incentives
• Verlag: Princeton University Press Apr 2014
• Erscheinungsjahr: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN-10: 069116102X
• ISBN-13: 9780691161020
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Zustand: Neu
• Abmessungen: 233B x 154 H x 17 T Millimeter Breite: 233 mm, Höhe: 154 mm, Tiefe: 17 mm
• Gewicht: 324 Gramm

Über diesen Titel

Inhaltsangabe

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.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

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.