A Formal Sociologic Study of Free Will

We make a formal sociologic study of the concept of free will. By using the language of mathematics and logic, we define what we call everlasting societies. Everlasting societies never age: persons never age, and the goods of the society are indestructible. The infinite history of an everlasting society unfolds by following deterministic and probabilistic laws that do their best to satisfy the free will of all the persons of the society. We define three possible kinds of histories for everlasting societies: primitive histories, good histories, and golden histories. In primitive histories, persons are inherently selfish, and they use their free will to obtain the personal ownerships of all the goods of the society. In good histories, persons are inherently good, and they use their free will to distribute the goods of the society. In good histories, a person is not only able to desire the personal ownership of goods, but is also able to desire that a good be owned by another person. In golden histories, free will is bound by the ethic of reciprocity, which states that "you should wish upon others as you would like others to wish upon yourself". In golden societies, the ethic of reciprocity becomes a law that partially binds free will, and that must be abided at all times. In other words, the verb "should" becomes the verb "must"

Woman Entrepreneurs and the Credit Market in Italy

[En] Bank of Italy Central Credit Register provides information on the whole Italian micro enterprises population having loans with the Italian banking system. By these data we investigate if female owned firms are discriminated or not in accessing the credit market in Italy. [It] La Centrale dei Rischi di Banca d'Italia fornisce informazioni sull’intera popolazione di ditte individuali aventi debiti con il sistema bancario italiano. Utilizzando questi dati si è studiato se le aziende con proprietario donna sono discriminate o meno nell’accesso al mercato del credito. [Fr] La Centrale des Risques de la Banque d'Italie fournit des informations sur l'entière population des entreprises individuelles ayant des dettes avec le système bancaire italien. Par ces données on a étudié si les entreprises avec une femme comme propriétaire sont discriminées ou non relativement à l'accès au marché du crédit.Small Business Credit; Lending Discrimination

Role of Status in Group Processes

[Excerpt] This chapter organizes the other chapters of the volume around a fundamental status-affirmation principle, namely, that status differentials generate corresponding differences in performance expectations which, in turn, produce behaviors that affirm performance expectations. The chapters in this volume elaborate that proposition by showing how information exchange, patterns of privilege, and the accuracy of power perceptions reflect or strengthen the status-affirmation process. Several chapters also suggest conditions that forestall or weaken this process such as claims to expertise and communication styles. Other chapters can be construed as offering applications of the status-affirmation principle to the performance of corporate project teams and to the relationships between standard and nonstandard employees in the workplace. Overall, the chapters reflect the strength and vitality of the tradition of work on group processes

A Preliminary Model of the Hydrologic-Sociologic Flow System of an Urban Area

This report describes the first phase of a larger study which is directed toward the development of a general technique for analyzing and solving urban metropolitan hydrologic problems through a joint consideration of both the physical and social dimensions. This report is limited to the preliminary work of identification of social variables, the first steps in assigning mathematical values to them, and developing a mathematical format for these variables. In addition, the physical-hydrologic system is identified for purposes of clarifying the elements in that system. The ultimate objective of the entire study is directed toward discovering a theoretical and generally applicable mathematical model of both the physical and social dimensions involved in metropolitan flooding problems

Consumers' Willingness to communicate in a second language : communicating in service settings

Purpose – The service management literature emphasizes the importance of communication, but language difficulties can make communicating in business settings more difficult. This paper addresses consumer willingness to communicate in a second language to identity the antecedents that drive consumer language preferences. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents the findings of an empirical study in two multilingual countries with a total of 361 adult respondents. Findings – The findings show perceived control to be the strongest antecedent of consumer willingness to communicate in a second language, and identifies second language skills as an antecedent in countries with little political tensions related to language, while political considerations is a strong antecedent in countries where language use is political. Research limitations/implications – The study is limited to countries with more than one official language. While multilingual countries make up around 2/3 of the world’s population, future research could test whether the same antecedents are applicable in monolingual societies. Practical implications – The findings help managers to understand in which situations consumers may be willing to switch language, and in which situations it is important to serve consumers in more than one language. Originality/value – The paper is the first to draw upon both the service management literature and the sociolinguistic literature to develop and test a model to explain consumer language preferences.status: publishe

Rich Socio-Cognitive Agents for Immersive Training Environments: Case of NonKin Village

Demand is on the rise for scientifically based human-behavior models that can be quickly customized and inserted into immersive training environments to recreate a given society or culture. At the same time, there are no readily available science model-driven environments for this purpose (see survey in Sect. 2). In researching how to overcome this obstacle, we have created rich (complex) socio-cognitive agents that include a large number of social science models (cognitive, sociologic, economic, political, etc) needed to enhance the realism of immersive, artificial agent societies. We describe current efforts to apply model-driven development concepts and how to permit other models to be plugged in should a developer prefer them instead. The current, default library of behavioral models is a metamodel, or authoring language, capable of generating immersive social worlds. Section 3 explores the specific metamodels currently in this library (cognitive, socio-political, economic, conversational, etc.) and Sect. 4 illustrates them with an implementation that results in a virtual Afghan village as a platform-independent model. This is instantiated into a server that then works across a bridge to control the agents in an immersive, platform-specific 3D gameworld (client). Section 4 also provides examples of interacting in the resulting gameworld and some of the training a player receives. We end with lessons learned and next steps for improving both the process and the gameworld. The seeming paradox of this research is that as agent complexity increases, the easier it becomes for the agents to explain their world, their dilemmas, and their social networks to a player or trainee

The Study of Perception and Project of the Territory Using Brain Storming

Brainstorming (based on conceptual mapping tools) is a method for identifying ideas, oriented to workgroups. In brief, it is the conceptual analysis of the discussion inside the group. In this way it is possible to enhance creative energies and develop new ideas. We propose two applications in the field of urban planning. The first is the development of a conceptual model of a given territory. By analysing the discussion among people involved in the elaboration of a report concerning social, economical, territorial aspects of Bergamo and Lecco (two Italian metropolitan areas), we have tried to find a link among various indicators and elements identifying the peculiar features of the territorial systems that we study. The second is, instead, the research of the best solution for opening a factory in a given territory. In this case study the discussion group is made by the actors intervening in the decision process, the administrators, the contractors, the urban planners, etc. The result will be compared with one obtained with traditional analysis.