Protestants and Catholics: Similar Work Ethic, Different Social Ethic

Long-run selection and the work ethic

That individuals contribute in social dilemma interactions even when contributing is costly is a wellestablished observation in the experimental literature. Since a contributor is always strictly worse off than a non-contributor the question is raised if an intrinsic motivation to contribute can survive in an evolutionary setting. Applying stochastic evolutionary dynamics we give conditions for...

Work Ethic, Employment Contracts, and Firm Value

Traditional agency theory assumes that managers are egoistic and need incentives to act in the best interests of the firm. As such, agency theory is a key determinant of firm size, capital structure, corporate governance, and firm value. However, traditional theory ignores the fact that some people are virtuous and do not need such incentives. If some employees are selfless, diligent, and have ...

Weber, Work Ethic And Well-Being

Following Max Weber’s seminal work, much recent work has turned to religious values to explain socio-economic developments. We present a test of Weber’s original thesis that addresses fundamental limitations of previous research. A novel method that builds on happiness research is used to measure a religious work ethic in terms of the psychic costs of unemployment. The resulting ‘experienced pr...

The Protestant Ethic versus the "New Ethic"

The Effect of Self-Directed Work Teams on Work Ethic

The purpose of this study was to compare work ethic of manufacturing machine operators between a selfdirected work team and a traditional work team based on four work ethic subscales and identify differences in work ethic based on six demographic factors. The major findings from the study indicated there were significant differences in the work ethic between machine operators in self-directed w...