Social representation of competition and fraud

Good citizenship includes fair competitive strategies. Dishonest competitive behaviour – such as fraud – can reflect the absence of one main characteristic of good citizenship as mindfulness of laws and social rules. This article investigates the social representation of competition and fraud with two samples of students from business schools in France and in Hungary. Two complementary studies were carried out with P. Vergès’ associative method and C. Flament and M. L. Rouquette’s tools. The purpose of the first study (NFrench=104, NHungarian=107) is to characterize the central core of the respondents’ representation of both competition and fraud. On the basis of different cultural, historical and economic backgrounds, it was expected that the concepts of fraud and competition would overlap more extensively among Hungarian students than among French students. Results from the first study suggest only slight differences regarding the content of the representations; moreover, in both samples the representations of competition and fraud lacked significant overlap. Hungarian representations of competition and fraud are characterized by a lower level of coherence. Furthermore, academic cheating is mentioned more frequently by Hungarian students than by French students. Following the methodological guidelines of social representations, in order to confirm the results of the first study, a second investigation was carried out (NFrench=115, NHungarian=127) with an alternative associative method. These results confirmed the first study in terms of the content of the social representations and differences regarding coherence. Finally, in the case of Hungarian students a higher prevalence of reference to academic cheating, and links between fraud and competition were found. Hungarians’ competitive result orientation, linked social representations of competition and fraud via a higher prevalence of academic cheating which can refer to the weaker inclination of Hungarians in terms of rule keeping behaviours, which is one of the hallmarks of a good citizen

Algebraic Representation of Social Capital Matrix

This paper proposes a mathematical model based on a Boolean algebra involving a 4×4 social capital matrix [Shah (2008)], that emerges through interaction within and across individuals, communities, institutions and state. The framework provides a coding system for the existence or otherwise of various categories of social interaction. The model illustrates that social interaction can be neatly described in a format that facilitates the interpretation of social intra- and interactions among the four types of players in generating economic activity.Social Capital (Matrix), Linear Space, Interactive Systems, Boolean Algebra

Power without representation? The House of Lords and social policy

In the past the House of Lords has generally, and arguably for good reasons, been ignored in discussions of the making and scrutiny of welfare. However, it has always played some role in this field, particularly in the scrutiny and passage of legislation, and since the removal of hereditary Peers in 1999, some writers have argued that the House has become more assertive. This article examines the attitudes of Peers, including a comparison with the views of Members of Parliament, and draws a number of conclusions about the role of the upper House in relation to social policy

Internal representation and factional faultlines as antecedents for board performance in social enterprises

There is an increasing scholarly interest in how social enterprises manage their hybrid nature. As hybrid organizational forms, social enterprises combine mission-driven social goals and revenue generating activities in a variety of organizational constellations and in diverse institutional contexts. Acknowledging the potentially conflicting demands that institutional environments impose on social enterprises there is an increasing research interest in the existence and proliferation of these conflicting demands at the organizational level. Some researchers have pointed to the importance of particular management practices and governance characteristics – such as authority relations and internal representation – as mechanisms to deal with the conflicting demands at the organizational level. This paper adds to this stream of literature by taking into account the organizational level dynamics of internal representation and the proliferation of factional groups in the boards of directors of hybrid organizational forms and their impact on board performance, ultimately influencing the organizational performance

Symbiotics of history and social psychology understanding social representations of history in Europe

COST Action IS1205 aims at advancing knowledge and promoting networking among historians and social psychologists to analyse the role played by social representations of history in Europe. Social representations of history are central to the identity of groups that may or may not form the majority in any given country. In Europe, these representations are at best diverse, at worst fragmented, among various national and ethnic groups, either in the same country or across the continent. If left unexplored and unexplained, these social (mis)representations can incite adverse emotions, in turn influencing group behaviours and possibly leading to intergroup rivalry. Bridging the two disciplines through representatives from 28 countries, Action IS1205 addresses this issue by coordinating research on the role of: social cognitive processes in shaping lay representations of history; lay representation of history through the concepts of nationhood and identities; social-psychological studies of the narrative transmission of history through textbooks and the media; lay representation of history and group-based emotions in shaping attitudes, intergroup confict and reconciliation processes.peer-reviewe

Reexamining the link between gender and corruption: The role of social institutions

In this paper we reexamine the link between gender inequality and corruption. We review the literature on the relationship between representation of women in economic and political life, democracy and corruption, and bring in a new previously omitted variable that captures the level of discrimination against women in a society: social institutions related to gender inequality. Using a sample of developing countries we regress corruption on the representation of women, democracy and other control variables. Then we add the subindex civil liberties from the OECD Development Centre's GID Data-Base as the measure of social institutions related to gender inequality. The results show that corruption is higher in countries where social institutions deprive women of their freedom to participate in social life, even accounting for democracy and representation of women in political and economic life as well as for other variables. Our findings suggest that, in a context where social values disadvantage women, neither political reforms towards democracy nor increasing the representation of women in political and economic positions might be enough to reduce corruption. --Social institutions,Gender inequality,Corruption,OECD Development Centre's GID Data-Base

Sub-committee Approval Voting and Generalised Justified Representation Axioms

Social choice is replete with various settings including single-winner voting, multi-winner voting, probabilistic voting, multiple referenda, and public decision making. We study a general model of social choice called Sub-Committee Voting (SCV) that simultaneously generalizes these settings. We then focus on sub-committee voting with approvals and propose extensions of the justified representation axioms that have been considered for proportional representation in approval-based committee voting. We study the properties and relations of these axioms. For each of the axioms, we analyse whether a representative committee exists and also examine the complexity of computing and verifying such a committee

Against the inappropriate use of numerical representation in social simulation

All tools have their advantages and disadvantages and for all tools there are times when they are appropriate and times when they are not. Formal tools are no exception to this and systems of numbers are examples of such formal tools. Thus there will be occasions where using a number to represent something is helpful and times where it is not. To use a tool well one needs to understand that tool and, in particular, when it may be inadvisable to use it and what its weaknesses are. However we are in an age that it obsessed by numbers. Governments spend large amounts of money training its citizens in how to use numbers and their declarative abstractions (graphs, algebra etc.) We are surrounded by numbers every day in: the news, whether forecasts, our speedometers and our bank balance. We are used to using numbers in loose, almost “conversational” ways – as with such concepts as the rate of inflation and our own “IQ”. Numbers have become so famliar that we no more worry about when and why we use them than we do about natural language. We have lost the warning bells in our head that remind us that we may be using numbers inappropriately. They have entered (and sometimes dominate) our language of thought. Computers have exasperbated this trend by making numbers very much easier to store/manipulate/communicate and more seductive by making possible attractive pictures and animations of their patterns. More subtley, when thought of as calculating machines that can play games with us and simulate the detail of physical systems, they suggest that everything comes down to numbers. For this reason it is second nature for us to use numbers in our social simulations and we frequently do so without considering the consequences of this choice. This paper is simply a reminder about numbers: a call to remember that they are just another (formal) tool; it recaps some of the conditions which indicate when a number is applicable and when it might be misleading; it looks at some of the dangers and pitfalls of using numbers; it considers some examples of the use of numbers; and it points out that we now have some viable alternatives to numbers that are not any less formal but which may be often preferable