Magister Commercii - MCom / The term organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) was first explored by Bateman and Organ (1983) to refer to particular behaviours that may benefit an organisation and gestures that cannot be enforced by means of formal role obligations nor be elicited by contractual guarantee of recompense. Organ (1988) proposes that OCB may have a positive impact on employees and organisational performance. Incumbents who are experiencing satisfaction from performing their jobs are likely to be better ambassadors for the organisation and be committed to their organization (Buitendach, 2005). Silverthorne (2005, p. 171) considers job satisfaction to be important for effective organisations and defines job satisfaction as "... a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one's job". Previous research indicates that individuals are most likely to go beyond their formal job requirements when they are satisfied with their jobs or committed to their organisations, when they are given intrinsically satisfying tasks to complete, and/or when they have supportive or inspirational leaders. Research into Organisational Citizenship behaviour (OCB) has primarily focused on the effects of OCB on individual and organisational performance. Several empirical studies report that OCB produces various tangible benefits for employees, co-workers, supervisors and organisations in a variety of industries (Ackfeldt & Leonard, 2005). It essentially refers to prosocial organisational behaviour that goes beyond what is expected in role descriptions. Bolino, Turnley and Niehoff (2004) claim that three basic assumptions have characterised OCB research. Firstly, they argue that OCB research stemmed from non-self-serving motives such as organisational commitment and job satisfaction. Moreover, they maintain that OCB has led to a more effective functioning of organisations and finally that OCB benefited employees by making organisations more attractive to work in. Murphy, Athansou and King (2002) reported positive relationships between OCB and job satisfaction. Chiu and Chen (2005) investigated the relationship between job characteristics and OCB and recommend that managers enhance employees' intrinsic job satisfaction to promote the display of OCB. Most research studies have investigated OCB as an outcome variable with job satisfaction as one of its antecedents. Although the majority of researchers contend that OCB is an outcome of job satisfaction, some research indicates that the two variables can function as antecedents or consequences or there may well be a reciprocal relationship between the two variables. This study endeavours to elucidate the factors that are postulated to produce job satisfaction and organisational citizenship behaviour, based on a sample of 133 employees in a retail organisation in the Western Cape. The results indicate that there are significant relationships between biographical characteristics and job satisfaction, between the dimensions of OCB and job satisfaction and between the job satisfaction dimensions and OCB. / South Africa

This thesis deals with the differences in the degree of altruism between men and women, with varying degrees of information. In three rounds of the dictator game experiment, the dictators decided how to redistribute the money between themselves and the recipient. The differences in altruism among the sexes were already dealt with, for example in the works by Andreoni, Vesterlund (2001), Dufwenberg, Muren (2004) or Eckel, Grossman (1998), whose experiments served to inspire the creation of the experimentation in this work. However, the differences in behaviour of men and women in all the observed rounds proved to be statictically insignificant, in this work. The results of this work do not support the hypothesis of a higher degree of altruism in the situation when the dictator has the information about the sex of the recipient, compared to the situation where he does not have it. Male dictators, as well as female ones, behaved equally altruistically to female and male and anonymous recipients.

Organ donation is traditionally based on the notion of making a gift based on altruism. An important aspect of ‘altruistic gifting’ is commitment to a solidaristic approach to meeting transplant needs. In line with this, people are encouraged to donate their organs at death to a common pool for collective provision, or donate a live organ to another freely. Given a chronic organ shortage, proposals have been made to change this system to increase donation. Proposals include introducing some organ market or payment in the form of a reward to incentivise live or deceased donation. However, these proposals have been opposed because of the grip of ‘altruistic gift’ as the only ethically acceptable way to procure and distribute organs. To support the ethical acceptability of other systems, ‘altruistic gift’ has been subject to various criticisms. One criticism is the moral relevance of altruism: people may donate on other motives other than altruism; or, altruism is not the motive that underpins most deceased organ donations. Another criticism is the moral value of altruism: even if deceased organ donations are in general altruistic, altruism does not express communal virtues like generosity that support solidarity. A third criticism is the value of the concept of altruism when understood in the pure sense: ‘pure altruism’ fashions an unnecessary or false dichotomy – gift versus sale – in the way people can ethically relate and help each other. Consistent with or following this criticism, it has been argued that use of a financial reward to incentivise donation can be compatible with preserving donation as altruistic albeit in a ‘non-pure’ sense. ‘Altruism’ and reward can co-exist as motives for donation. This thesis concerns itself centrally with the third criticism. It argues that the concept of altruism delineates a distinctive moral ‘perspective’ of a common humanity that engenders a devotion to others’ interests. Accordingly, as I argue, ‘non-pure’ definitions of altruism are misleading as to how a financial reward can be compatible with altruism. From this, the thesis argues that introduction of a financial reward for organ donation would not preserve donation as altruistic. Based on an understanding of altruism as also a motive for ‘creative’ relationships, the thesis counters criticisms of its relevance and value to deceased organ donation under a gift model. As part of its legal analysis, the thesis considers the antithesis of ‘altruistic gift’: the idea of organs as property which places individual control on their disposition at its moral centre. It has been argued that organs should be owned as property so that individuals can sell them, or transmit them to relatives so that relatives can claim payment from donation. To provoke thought on whether organs should be owned as private property like any other, the thesis proposes an inheritance regime for organs with family as default successor.

This dissertation consists of three essays on different aspects of water management. The first essay focuses on the sustainability of freshwater use by introducing the notion that altruistic parents do bequeath economic assets for their offspring. Constructing a two-period, over-lapping generational model, an optimal ratio of consumption and pollution for old and young generations in each period is determined. Optimal levels of water consumption and pollution change according to different parameters, such as, altruistic degree, natural recharge rate, and population growth. The second essay concerns water sharing between countries in the case of trans-boundary river basins. The paper recognizes that side payments fail to forge water-sharing agreement among the international community and that downstream countries have weak bargaining power. An interconnected game approach is developed by linking the water allocation issue with other non-water issues such as trade or border security problems, creating symmetry between countries in bargaining power. An interconnected game forces two countries to at least partially cooperate under some circumstances. The third essay introduces the concept of virtual water (VW) into a traditional international trade model in order to estimate water savings for a water scarce country. A two country, two products and two factors trade model is developed, which includes not only consumers and producer’s surplus, but also environmental externality of water use. The model shows that VW trade saves water and increases global and local welfare. This study should help policy makers to design appropriate subsidy or tax policy to promote water savings especially in water scarce countries.

The diploma thesis analyzes market in human reproductive cells - men's sperms and women's eggs for use in assisted reproduction. The topic of this diploma thesis arises from the increasing infertility and urgency of the assisted reproduction in the modern society. This paper is divided in two parts. The first part of this paper describes a historical development of assisted reproduction and than economic theory that is applicable to the human reproductive cells market namely the theory of the prohibition and the theory of the price regulation. Second part analyzes three different reproductive cells markets -- American, British and Czech market. Second part also discus arguments and criticism of the free human organ markets included human reproductive cells market. This paper brings integrated summary based on arguments evaluating free trade with human sperms and eggs.

The objective of this theses is to explore the development of gift-giving in Czech Republic after the velvet revolution in 1989. First part of the theses deals with the theoretical basis of altruism and philanthropy. The gift-giving explored in the theses is viewed as a specific case when the beneficient does not know the beneficiary. This specific case is then discussed with the theoretical aspect of altruism and philanthropy. Further on the civil society and its connection to the gift-giving is observed and the role of the foundations in czech society reflected. The analysis of the gift-giving is provided in the second part of the theses, based on the financial history of four czech foundations. A clear cut trend is not obvious, thus some other aspects coming out of the analysis are accented.

This thesis describes the situation on the human organ black market. It is aimed at countries that are most affected by this phenomenon, despite the illegality of the entire process in these countries. The aim of this thesis is the analysis of the market, identification of groups of people affected by this phenomenon and analyze global legalization of financial compensation. The theoretical part describes the areas of the world where this market is the most developed. Thesis summarizes the situation in India, Pakistan and also analyzes the current Iranian and Australian system of financial compensation. Impacts of selling organs to poor donors are analyzed from the perspective of economic and psychological, emotional and social impacts. Organ sales paradoxically lead to a large proportion of cases the overall deterioration donors from all these perspectives. The practical part is focused on the economic situation description of the human organ market and for its amendment in the event of the introduction of financial compensation. The financial compensation provided for lost wages during surgery and undergoing medical risk is a possible way to increase the supply of donors in developed countries. In this thesis are used the individual examples and data which are collected from a small number of respondents (because of the difficulty in acquiring data due to the illegality of the process). There are used data published by the World Health Organization, The World Bank and also data from surveys directly collected from places that are affected by this issue.

The evolution of social behaviour has been studied using different frameworks based on game theory and quantitative genetics. While both approaches provide a conceptually clear explanation of evolution of social behaviour, both have been limited in their applicability to empirical systems, mainly due to difficulties in measuring model parameters. Here, I develop a new quantitative genetics approach to the study of the evolution of social behaviours based on indirect genetic effects (IGEs), which parameters can be readily determined by empirical studies. IGEs describe effects of an individual's genotype on phenotypes of social partners, which may indirectly affect their fitness. Unlike traditional quantitative genetics assuming a non-genetical, non-heritable environment, IGE models assume that part of the environment is social, provided by parents and other interacting partners, thus has a genetic basic and can be heritable. In this study I explore the effects of IGEs on the magnitude and range of phenotypic values in a focal individual. I show that social interactions may not only cause indirect genetic effects but can also modify direct genetic effects. I demonstrate that interactions can substantially alter group mean phenotype and variance. This may lead to scenarios in which between group phenotypic variation is much higher than within group variation despite similar underlying genetic properties of different groups. Further, I analyse how IGEs influence levels of selection and predictions about evolutionary trajectories. I show that IGEs can create selection pressure at the group level, leading to evolution of behaviours that would not evolve otherwise. Moreover, I demonstrate that IGEs may lead to differences in the direction of evolutionary response between genotypes and phenotypes. Building on these results, I show that IGE models can be translated to and are fully compatible with traditional kin and multilevel selection models. I express costs and benefits in IGE parameters and determine the conditions under which social interactions lead to the evolution of cooperative or harmful behaviours. Therefore, the model I propose combines the conceptual clarity of kin and multilevel selection models with the applicability of IGE models, which parameters can be empirically determined, facilitating the testing of model predictions. Finally, I show that the use of IGE models is strongly limited by the underlying assumption of linearity. I prove that the modelling of interaction dynamics leads to steady state solutions found by IGE models only under limited conditions. In this light, I discuss the relevance of results published previously and propose a solution of how this problem can be addressed.

When person decides on life-shortening action he compares value of current and future life with costs and benefits of this action that can be simply divided into four categories, psychological, financial, religious and altruistic. The main issue of the paper is what is the role of altruism in decision making. Decision making model used in this article is based on the model of Becker and Posner, but is modified to include all preventive and risk factors, respectively, costs and revenues. This model is interpreted for types of life-shortenitng actions, which are then compared with each other. From this comparison it follows that the altruism has in decision making rather greater relative weight.

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