Violent Political Action and Selective Incentives Violent Political Action

Everybody who has the family wants to worry only about personal and family life and to have a peaceful society. These people will never like to indulge in war with others and to sacrifice their peace. Unless there is a big threat to their survival, people tend to be peaceful. The question arises why would someone sacri-ce self-interest to take part in violent group actions. In business also, people might involve in violent behavior when they feel threat to their job or career. Often some employees are deprived of facilities, opportunities and fair performance appraisals thus they can become more violent.

Standard models of decision making

The decision making models in business may be rational, adaptive, planned, collective participation, intuitive, and/or emergent. All these models use facts and some procedures to come to a conclusion. No decision making model offers complete solution to emotional decision making in limited time involving too many participants, thus a combination of models may help. However, decisions like offering quota to a particular race, promoting single gender, putting age limit etc. are decisions that can often end up in employee violent behavior (Surowiecki, 2005). The justice and fairness at workplace are rational aspects that can affect lives of employees. The process of decision making can be affected by internal and external stakeholders. The stakeholders can influence the choice of decision making model that favors them the most. Thus the decision making can suit one group but not the other. Often the facts favor one group since the group is in the majority while the intuitive model will suggest something totally opposite.

The decision making models are based on the choices of the majority. However, it should never be overlooked that every human being has a representation in the group (Surowiecki, 2005). Major or minor, this representation should be valued. The reason for this is that in history, sometimes a very small number of people have shown violent behavior that caused damage to many people. Thus, the violent behavior should be avoided at any cost. For this, it is very important to understand why a person or a group will show violent behavior. Everybody has a reason to be violent or non-violent.

Violent political action

Violence means to show such abnormal behaviors that can cause damage to people and society. There are reasons for showing violent behavior. Violence is either due to hormonal imbalance of an individual or due to the reason that his interests are not met. At personal, social and political levels, people have different interests. When a person is not promoted once, there is no rational reason of becoming violent. The reason is the cost benefit analysis. The cost benefit analysis shows that cost of being violent at work place (cost means demotion, firing etc.) is much more than the benefits (getting a slight increase in pay due to promotion). However, if an employee or any other individual is unfairly treated for too long, he loses patience (Keefer and Khemani, 2005). Also the cost benefit analysis will tell him that the cost of being violent at work place (getting fired) will be less than the benefit (getting fair treatment at same job or getting better job). Thus his rationality would approve the violent behavior.

External to organizational context, the socially biased behavior can also trigger violence. Every human being has right to live an independent, free and unprejudiced life. However, the history shows that there has been immense segregation and discrimination against the blacks, Muslims and the Jews. These people have been suppressed not only at social but also at organizational level for too long. Also these three groups have shown violent behavior in different times and areas. Blacks were for example, kept slaves and deprived of economic growth. They were not allowed to work, sit, eat and socialize with the whites. The Jews were socially mocked and the Muslims are considered all terrorist thus even some individuals will not agree to sell their pets to Muslims thinking they might hurt their animals. This behavior, and even worse has pushed these groups into violence. The blacks have been known for stealing and snatching given their high rates of unemployment. The Muslims would attack Israelis on roads since their right of land is taken away. Thus it is evident that a human being does not commit violence for no reason. They are so much deprived, suppressed or wronged that they think that violence is the last solution and nothing can be decided on diplomatic tables (Decision-making & Managing Conflict,...

These people were ruled by dictators since long. Deprived of their right of democracy and independence, these people finally showed a violent display of protest and paralyzed the system as well as the economy of the country that finally required dictators to leave the country and be trialed.
Selective incentives

The selective incentives are the benefits that are offered to those in a group. Thus, people may enter a violent behavior to get a selective benefit. This selective benefit can be in form of maintaining individual status, or promoting an individual or offering them protection against a severe action (Ginges, and Atran, 2009). Also the participants in violation may think that their self-esteem increases thus they participate in violence to protect social interests and gain self-importance. For example, during the fight for rights of women, many women would join rallies since they believed that their self-esteem increases by feeling that they can have control on the world by even giving tough time to state police etc. Likewise, the Jews knew in WWII that they are subject of hatred for all and only violence than help them gain some recognition.

Different groups of people can be attracted to different sets of selective incentives. Normally these incentives are those that the group lacks. Money is selective incentive for the poor, power is selective incentive for the suppressed, respect was once critical selective incentive for the women and freedom is the selective incentive for Palestinians. Thus these groups can be tempted to enter a politically violent behavior to get their selective incentive. There is a kind, limit and level of selective incentive (Ginges, and Atran, 2009).

Instrumentally rational individuals

The violence is not only game of insane. When instrumentally rational individuals enter violent behavior, this might be the worst kind of violence. The students for example, that face the issue of school fees raised exponentially are even ready to surround administrative buildings until the fees are restored. Since the instrumentally rational individuals have most probably first analyzed the situation and all other possible solutions and concluded that violence would only serve better, these individuals can be barely controlled. The students are thus ready to sacrifice lives since they believe if their fees are not decreased they would not be able to get professional education and thus they will not get good jobs given financial tight situation and finally their lives will be as miserable as their parents'. This rational decision making is too critical that it can end up in uncontrollable series of violence and sacrifice.

Moral Questions of Behavior

Morality is a set of ethical standards that a person follows. It is ethics and morality that saves us from many inhumane behaviors. The moral questions like should people be treated fairly or not? often lay down the foundations of behavior of individual as well as the society. The moral person will not directly evaluate a situation on the basis of set standards of business or gain. He will rather assess the moral side of a situation to decide how he should respond to it. These people are seldom attracted by financial incentives. Thus, respect is more important to them than the designation and satisfaction values more to them than the money.

Not every human being is alike. While some human beings are tempted by increase in salary and getting promotions, others believe in morality. This morality often leads human beings to violent or non-violent behavior. For example, a generous and kind person believes in respecting human beings and accepting their decisions. Thus if he is not promoted, he might accept the decision since he does not like violence. On the other hand, if the same person sees unjust happening to a person, he might not keep silent for too long. He will finally become violent if he finds an innocent person killed in front of him. Thus a person can often become violent or non-violent because of his moral standards.

The incentives are different for different people. This difference is based on moral standards. A person valuing prosperous life will have moral standards achieving wealth. Likewise, a person valuing family will find it more worthwhile to spend more time with family than in office. Thus the first person can be violent if he is not promoted while the second person can become violent of he is asked to work four more hours in the office.

Examples

People are inherently different. Not even two children of…