Elaboration of a teaching program in development cooperation in the University of Alcalá

COOPUAH, a group of teachers and researchers of the University of Alcalá (UAH), who belong to different disciplines, consider that the training offered to students in Development Cooperation by their institution has some deficiencies. The group pursues the general objective of reflecting about and evaluating in particular how this field is included in the university curricula in order to propose a teaching program that could fill the that gap. The main results highlight that the current teaching offer is insufficient, it comes from the environmental and health sciences fields, and in organizational level, is concentrated in the 2nd semester. We therefore believe that we need a multidisciplinary work to expand this teaching offer, redistribute it both semesters, and to offer a program addressed to all students of the University of Alcalá and recognized officially by the institutio

Individual Motivation, its Nature, Determinants and Consequences for Within Group Behavior

The paper deals with evaluating the adequacy of the assumption that in economic transactions people are self-interested insofar as they are motivated solely by the concern of maximizing their own utility, and in particular with assessing how this assumption affects within-group behavior. Policy and incentive structures based on the assumption of exogenous and self-interested motivation can undermine other sources of motivation and have negative effects both on cooperative behavior and also on economic efficiency. The paper sketches the motivational assumption of homo œconomicus: in the classical formulation, in rational choice theory and in Becker’s later work which introduces personal and social capital into the individual utility function. It then challenges the position that homo œconomicus contains an adequate characterization of human motivation for cooperative within-group behavior. It introduces alternative motivational behaviors: philia and altruism, identity and self-expression, moral rules, intrinsic motivation and social norms. It argues that motivations are complex and multiple; a single assumption of utility maximization is insufficient for policy purposes. As the individual is always a social being, how she behaves will be dependent on the social context in which she is acting. If motivations are endogenous, and if under certain conditions maximizing motivation displaces other sources of motivation, then these indirect effects, and their long term consequences for efficiency and equity, should be taken into account in framing economic policies.Motivation; Rational Choice; Self-Interest; Cooperation

Clean Clothes Campaign Discussion Paper: Evaluating the CCC

The paper is a compilation of responses to the questionnaire circulated by the Clean Clothes Campaign in an effort to evaluate the organization’s aims and activities

South-South cooperation in health professional education : a literature review

In the literature on the evolution of funding approaches there is criticism of traditional funding strategies and the promotion of inclusive models, such as South-South Cooperation (SSC) and triangular models. The latter are felt to have a number of advantages. This article has four broad objectives: (i) to present a literature review on the evolution of Southern approaches to development co-operation; (ii) to indicate examples of current co-operative programmes in health and health professional education in Africa; (iii) to assess the advantages and disadvantages of these models; and (iv) to mention some emerging issues in monitoring and evaluation. The Boolean logic approach was used to search for applicable literature within three topic layers. Searches were conducted using PubMed, PLoS and other accessible databases. An initial draft of the article was presented to a group of academics and researchers at the Flemish Inter-University Council (VLIR-UOS) Primafamed annual workshop held in August 2010 in Swaziland. Comments and suggestions from the group were included in later versions of the article. It is important to note that the existence of various funding models implemented by a variety of actors makes it difficult to measure their effects. In health and health professional education, however, SSC and triangular models of aid provide conditions for more effective programming through their focus on participation and long-term involvement. With an eye towards evaluating programmes, a number of salient issues are emerging. The importance of context is highlighted

Evaluación del uso de la comunicación para el desarrollo en las intervenciones de conflicto. Medir la paz en la comunicación participativa

The application of Communication for Development (C4D) in conflict prevention, conflict reduction and post-conflict reconstruction interventions is a relatively new field. International organisations that have begun to adopt new communication & media designs in their peace work are progressively offering a credible baseline to engage in the assessment of this practice. In this paper, I offer a short compendium of the evaluation frameworks I have developed through my empirical research on the impact of Communication for Development in Peacebuilding; this is presented alongside a number of reflections and followed by concluding considerations on the state of the field.La aplicación de la Comunicación para el Desarrollo (C4D) en la prevención y reducción de conflictos, así como en la intervención para la reconstrucción cuando estos no pueden ser evitados, es un campo relativamente nuevo. Las organizaciones internacionales que han rediseñado su comunicación y medios en su trabajo para la consecución de la paz nos están ofreciendo de forma progresiva una base de referencia fiable para participar en la evaluación de esta práctica. En este trabajo presento un breve compendio de los marcos de evaluación que he desarrollado a través de mi investigación empírica sobre el impacto de la Comunicación para el Desarrollo en la consolidación de la Paz; un estudio que viene acompañado de una serie de reflexiones y seguido por unas conclusiones finales sobre el estado en el que este campo se encuentra en la actualidad

Short versus long term benefits and the evolution of cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma game

In this paper I investigate the evolution of cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma when individuals change their strategies subject to performance evaluation of their neighbours over variable time horizons. In the monochrome setting, in which all agents per default share the same performance evaluation rule, weighing past events strongly dramatically enhances the prevalence of cooperators. For co-evolutionary models, in which evaluation time horizons and strategies can co-evolve, I demonstrate that cooperation naturally associates with long-term evaluation of others while defection is typically paired with very short time horizons. Moreover, considering the continuous spectrum in between enhanced and discounted weights of past performance, cooperation is optimally supported when cooperators neither give enhanced weight to past nor more recent events, but simply average payoffs. Payoff averaging is also found to emerge as the dominant strategy for cooperators in co-evolutionary models, thus proposing a natural route to the evolution of cooperation in viscous populations

Organizational Climate as Performance Driver: Health Care Workers’ Perception in a Large Hospital

Recently health care (HC) organizations have increasingly embarked on organizational climate (OC) assessment with the intent to improve their efficiency and the quality of the delivered services. This is important; however, it is even if more crucial to ensure that workers engaged in the evaluation process are aware of the importance of their fruitful engagement in this investigation as well as of its potential benefits. From the management viewpoint, this is crucial to plan and implement management initiatives able to create a great place to work. The purpose of this paper is to shed empirical light on how, in effect, HC workers perceive OC for itself and as a performance driver to assess and manage. The study was carried out through an action research (AR) project, which included the use of both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Key phases of the AR project were some focus groups and a survey. During the focus groups, several methods and approaches were adopted for getting opinions from people and animating discussion. About the survey, a total sample of 560 HC workers was investigated. The AR project has shown that even if HC workers intuitively conceive OC as an important performance driver, the meaning of the construct is not completely clear. Moreover, a good level of awareness among HC workers about how and why OC can improve individual and organizational performance represents a key issue to address in evaluating and managing OC

Rehabilitation and social behavior: Experiments in prison

Despite the economic and social significance of crime reduction and criminals’ rehabilitation, research evaluating the effects of incarceration on behavior is surprisingly scarce. We conduct an experiment with 105 prison inmates and complement it with administrative data in order to explore several aspects of their social behavior. We first perform a comprehensive analysis of behavior in three economic games, finding evidence of discrimination against a sample from outside prison. In addition, our regression analysis reveals that inmates generally become less pro-social towards this out-group the longer they remain incarcerated. Finally, we introduce and evaluate a priming intervention that asks inmates to reflect on their time spent in prison. This intervention has a very sizeable and significant impact, increasing pro-sociality towards the out-group. Hence, a simple, low-cost intervention of this sort can have desirable effects in promoting rehabilitation and integration into social and economic life after release