Search results

The article engages with Amartya Sen’s interpretation of Piero Sraffa’s Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities (PCMC). Sen has the distinction of highlighting the philosophical and methodological aspects of Sraffa’s work. In this regard, Sen has highlighted the role of counterfactuals in economic theory and the role of value theory in political economy as a matter of “social communication.” On these two issues, there is considerable discussion in recent Sraffian scholarship that is concerned with the significance of Sraffa’s critique of marginalist theory and the rehabilitation of classical economics. The article scrutinizes Sen’s interpretation of PCMC and highlights several noteworthy contributions and insights. While being sympathetic to the substantive points of criticism entailed by PCMC, Sen misunderstands Sraffa’s “critique of economic theory” and the reasoning involved in such a critique. A critical reading reveals that Sen’s interpretation of Sraffa is more reflective of his own work on the “choice basis of description” than an appreciation of Sraffa’s theoretical project. Despite the misunderstandings, the article highlights the similarities in vision between Sen’s interpretation of Sraffa and Sraffa’s revival of classical economics. By undertaking such a critical reading, the article raises important issues about method and the scope of economic enquiries.

This paper shows that Amartya Sen admitted self-sacrifice as an opposite motive to self-interest. Between the eighties and the nineties, in his works on development economics, Sen often referred to the conditions of women in less developed countries, because these are areas where gender inequality is more pronounced, and women’s well-being is worsened by behavior motivated by self-sacrifice. But these women were affected by a perception bias that made them unable to understand their deprived condition. Perception bias made it harder to improve their freedom and reduce inequality. Sen offered a more complex analysis of economic behavior as compared to his contemporaries. Selfishness and public discussion might be identified as the ideal methods of improving individual well-being when inequality and perception bias leads people to self-sacrifice.

Large-Scale Assessments in Germany have shown that language-minority students as well as students with special educational needs (SEN) perform significantly less well than language-majority students or students without SEN. This performance gap may be related to a limited accessibility of the tests. One way to test whether assessments allow all students to demonstrate their knowledge in a comparable way is the analysis of differential item functioning (DIF). In this chapter, we evaluate DIF coefficients in order to examine group-specific difficulties in reading comprehension for language-minority students and students with SEN in the German National Educational Assessment.

In the first study, we investigate the assessment of reading literacy of language-minority learners and German monolinguals from low-SES families. We found only a few items with moderate DIF and no items with large DIF. This indicates that the reading assessment was equally valid for second-language learners and German monolingual students.

In our second study, we report about the psychometrically successful development of easy and more accessible reading tasks for students with SEN. Further analyses showed that DIF predominantly occurred in items that captured contents that are not necessarily covered in literacy instruction targeted at students with SEN.

Purpose – This capstone chapter introduces Amartya Sen's important and innovative theory of justice to researchers on fairness in groups and organizations. Here, I discuss how Sen's theory can provide grounding for both philosophical and social scientific work on justice and how social science research can inform and be informed by Sen's theory.

Design/methodology/approach – In this chapter, I discuss Sen's new book, A Theory of Justice, and explain the main aspects of Sen's theory of justice. I then draw conceptual linkages between Sen's theory and those introduced in each of the other chapters included in this volume.

Findings – I show that Sen's view of justice goes beyond social contract theories that attempt to identify ideal institutional arrangements to seek practical solutions that increase justice as experienced by actual people in the world. Rather than parallel endeavors, Sen's approach reveals philosophy and social science to be deeply connected to each other and to justice by providing a unifying theme by which various social scientific traditions are shown to study aspects of the same underlying phenomena. Further, I demonstrate how philosophy and social science together can increase justice in the world.

Originality/value – Sen's theory of justice, though influential in economic and policy circles, is largely unfamiliar to social psychologists and organizational scholars. I introduce these fields to Sen's theory of justice and show how it is useful for social psychological approaches to the study of fairness in groups and organizations.

The extent to which Amartya Sen’s capability approach is prefigured in Karl Marx’s views comes into sharper focus when one notes that Marx and Friedrich Engels explicitly argued that the transformation from capitalism to communism would involve the development of “a totality of capacities”. Sen also cites the notion of “false consciousness” in developing his view of objectivity and claims a Marxian pedigree for the notion of “objective illusion”. He suggests that public discussion can make evaluative judgements better informed and less parochial, so that they connect more closely with what people have reason to value. The author argues that this line of argument is also closely related to views John Stuart Mill advanced in his discussion of the “competent judges” and in his defence of liberty of thought and discussion.

The approach used is conceptual analysis and discussion of historical texts.

The chief findings are that Amartya Sen’s works on capability and objectivity have deeper affinities with some of Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engels’ views than has been hitherto appreciated by scholars. However, some of the claims which Sen makes about objectivity and false consciousness are prefigured in the writings of J.S. Mill.

Because some of these affinities between the works of Sen, Marx and Mill have not previously been recognised, the paper’s elucidation of them is a new contribution to the literature.

This paper is an attempt to understand how Amartya Sen's thinking on development and freedom has evolved from his critique of welfare economics and his concern with underdevelopment and poverty. It is argued that Sen has done a great deal to rescue welfare economics from the consequences of methodological individualism by seeking an objective basis for comparisons of well‐being, by insisting on the need for interpersonal comparability and by creating a space for normative evaluations. Sen's contribution to the human development approach with its emphasis on positive freedom has also helped to provide a valuable counterweight to the dominant free market approach. However, some concerns are expressed that the approach does not give sufficient attention to long‐run dynamics and that the conception of capability employed is not helpful for the understanding of development

Gives an in depth view of the strategies pursued by the world’s leading chief executive officers in an attempt to provide guidance to new chief executives of today. Considers the marketing strategies employed, together with the organizational structures used and looks at the universal concepts that can be applied to any product. Uses anecdotal evidence to formulate a number of theories which can be used to compare your company with the best in the world. Presents initial survival strategies and then looks at ways companies can broaden their boundaries through manipulation and choice. Covers a huge variety of case studies and examples together with a substantial question and answer section.

Sen has recently acknowledged his “immense” debts to the liberal tradition of J.S. Mill and, to much lesser extent, to T.H. Green. This essay explores how identifying himself so enthusiastically with Mill sheds light on one’s understanding of Sen’s defense of the capabilities approach. But trying to understand him through the lens of Mill can be a double-edged sword. Sen not only risks causing his readers to append too much Mill to capabilities liberalism, but he also risks encouraging them to misinterpret Mill. These implications naturally bear significantly on how compelling readers find both Sen’s conception of distributive justice and the public policy recommendations based on it. Besides exploring some of the problematic implications of Sen’s readily identifying with Mill’s liberalism in particular, this essay also speculates on what it means to identify with any political philosophical tradition and how such identification colors and adds momentum to both one’s political theorizing and practical recommendations. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Textual interpretation.

As noted above, this paper examines how Sen’s esteem for J.S. Mill sheds light on the capabilities approach. It also suggests that using Mill to understand Sen better is fraught with difficulties.

The paper also speculates on what it means to identify with a particular political philosophical tradition much as Sen identifies with Mill’s liberalism.

This paper also explores how such identification with a particular political philosophical tradition colors and adds momentum to both one’s political theorizing and practical recommendations.

Using Mill to understand Sen better is certainly worthwhile. On the other hand, doing this sort of thing risks distorting Mill and even Sen.

Presents a special issue, enlisting the help of the author’s students and colleagues, focusing on age, sex, colour and disability discrimination in America. Breaks the evidence down into manageable chunks, covering: age discrimination in the workplace; discrimination against African‐Americans; sex discrimination in the workplace; same sex sexual harassment; how to investigate and prove disability discrimination; sexual harassment in the military; when the main US job‐discrimination law applies to small companies; how to investigate and prove racial discrimination; developments concerning race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; developments concerning discrimination against workers with HIV or AIDS; developments concerning discrimination based on refusal of family care leave; developments concerning discrimination against gay or lesbian employees; developments concerning discrimination based on colour; how to investigate and prove discrimination concerning based on colour; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; using statistics in employment discrimination cases; race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning gender discrimination in the workplace; discrimination in Japanese organizations in America; discrimination in the entertainment industry; discrimination in the utility industry; understanding and effectively managing national origin discrimination; how to investigate and prove hiring discrimination based on colour; and, finally, how to investigate sexual harassment in the workplace.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a critique of Sen’s utilisation of aspects of Marx’s thought that inform his idea of justice. Marx’s ideas appear in four main areas of discussion: Sen’s positioning of Marx in relation to the other thinkers in his approach to justice; Marx’s fluid notion of identity and its relation to social choice; the problem of going beyond a subjective perspective to consider objective concerns by considering the impact of what Sen calls “objective illusion”; and the issue of just redistribution.

The author utilises a Marxian framework of analysis that engages in immanent critique of Sen’s use of Marx in relation to his theory of justice. This is accomplished through textual analysis and by critical assessment of the analytical Marxist tradition that Sen can be seen as using in his own theories with all their inherent weaknesses.

Sen’s attempt to use Marx’s ideas to inform his theory of justice founder because: he groups Marx with thinkers that would not accept his desire for the abolition of capitalism and a more just society beyond it. He reduces Marx to the analytical tradition with all its inherent weaknesses. He resorts to a methodological individualist approach of choice that Marx rejects. His search for positional objectivity is undermined by the power of capitalist ideology and ruling class interest. His discussion of just redistribution ignores how Marx’s approach can overcome the arbitrariness that Sen thinks is inevitable when making just decisions.

Theoretically, the paper suggests that, based on immanent critique and textual analysis, Sen’s use of Marx’s idea of justice is problematic most notably because Sen keeps his analysis within the framework of capitalism that Marx would reject. The implication for further research is the development of Marx’s own arguments on what constitutes a just society.

Practically, the paper raises questions about the capacity for justice to be achieved within the capitalist system for the reasons discussed in relation to Sen.

Socially, the paper implies that far greater measures to tackle the injustices of the world are necessary than seem to be admitted to by justice theorists such as Sen.

The author shows that the use of Marx’s theories to inform Sen’s notion of justice, while to be welcomed, lose their efficacious power to expose the full injustice of capitalism and the need for its transcendence.