IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ebg/iesewp/d-0936.html

The 'logic of gift' in business

Author

Listed:
  • Argandoña, Antonio

    (IESE Business School)

Abstract

Traditionally, the Social Doctrine of the Church was founded on principles and virtues. Then, the Encyclical Letter Caritas in veritate introduced the "logic of gift" and the "principle of gratuitousness" as essential ingredients of economic life. In contrast, the traditional theory of the firm, based on contracts, has no place for love; and likewise, the economics of altruism and gift is inspired in self-interest, a paradigm that is alien to behavior ruled by love. This paper discusses the relationship between Benedict XVI's ideas on love and gift and the "logic of virtues", which has already been incorporated into the theory of the firm. Following an analysis of the concepts of love, gift and gratuitousness and of the role of virtues in management, a parallel is developed between acting in a virtuous way and "donating goods", material or otherwise, including developing virtues and "giving love". This argument is developed in three areas: the market (exchange of equivalents), the State (duty), and civil society (fraternity). The Encyclical underlines that the "logic of gift" should be present in all three, not only in the third sector.

Suggested Citation

  • Argandoña, Antonio, 2011. "The 'logic of gift' in business," IESE Research Papers D/936, IESE Business School.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebg:iesewp:d-0936
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.iese.edu/research/pdfs/DI-0936-E.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    2. Smith, Adam, 2008. "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: A Selected Edition," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199535927 edited by Sutherland, Kathryn.
    3. Khalil, Elias L., 2004. "What is altruism?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 97-123, February.
    4. Harbaugh, William T, 1998. "The Prestige Motive for Making Charitable Transfers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(2), pages 277-282, May.
    5. Andreoni, James, 1990. "Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(401), pages 464-477, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Greiner, Ben & Vittoria Levati, M., 2005. "Indirect reciprocity in cyclical networks: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 711-731, October.
    2. Anya Samek & Roman M. Sheremeta, 2017. "Selective Recognition: How to Recognize Donors to Increase Charitable Giving," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(3), pages 1489-1496, July.
    3. Elias L. Khalil, 2010. "Adam Smith’S Concept Of Self‐Command As A Solution To Dynamic Inconsistency And The Commitment Problem," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 48(1), pages 177-191, January.
    4. Anya Savikhin Samek & Roman Sheremeta, 2014. "Recognizing contributors: an experiment on public goods," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 17(4), pages 673-690, December.
    5. Xiaoting Zheng & Jiayue Chen & Yipeng Li, 2021. "The association between charitable giving and happiness: Evidence from the Chinese General Social Survey," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 55(6), pages 2103-2138, December.
    6. Galasso, Vincenzo, 2003. "Redistribution and fairness: a note," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 885-892, November.
    7. Elias Asproudis, 2011. "Revisiting environmental groups and members’ behaviour: budget, size and (im)pure altruism," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 13(2), pages 139-156, June.
    8. Duffy, John & Kornienko, Tatiana, 2010. "Does competition affect giving?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 74(1-2), pages 82-103, May.
    9. Boudreau, Kevin J. & Jeppesen, Lars Bo & Reichstein, Toke & Rullani, Francesco, 2021. "Crowdfunding as Donations to Entrepreneurial Firms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(7).
    10. Mengyuan Zhou, 2022. "Does the Source of Inheritance Matter in Bequest Attitudes? Evidence from Japan," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 43(4), pages 867-887, December.
    11. Anne Corcos & Yorgos Rizopoulos, 2011. "Is prosocial behavior egocentric? The “invisible hand” of emotions," Post-Print halshs-01968213, HAL.
    12. Fanghella, Valeria & Ibanez, Lisette & Thøgersen, John, 2025. "What you don't know, can't hurt you: Avoiding donation requests for environmental causes," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 233(C).
    13. Emin Karagözoğlu & Elif Tosun, 2022. "Endogenous Game Choice and Giving Behavior in Distribution Games," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-32, November.
    14. repec:esx:essedp:762 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Keval Amin & Erica Harris, 2022. "The Effect of Investor Sentiment on Nonprofit Donations," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 175(2), pages 427-450, January.
    16. Bruno S. Frey & Stephan Meier, "undated". "Pro-Social Behavior, Reciprocity or Both?," IEW - Working Papers 107, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    17. Ayelet Gneezy & Alex Imas & Amber Brown & Leif D. Nelson & Michael I. Norton, 2012. "Paying to Be Nice: Consistency and Costly Prosocial Behavior," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(1), pages 179-187, January.
    18. Yamamura, Eiji & Tsutsui, Yoshiro & Ohtake, Fumio, 2018. "Altruistic and selfish motivations of charitable giving: The case of the hometown tax donation system (Furusato nozei) in Japan," MPRA Paper 86181, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Korenok, Oleg & Millner, Edward L. & Razzolini, Laura, 2013. "Impure altruism in dictators' giving," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 1-8.
    20. Anya Savikhin & Roman Sheremeta, 2010. "Visibility of Contributions and Cost of Information: An Experiment on Public Goods," Working Papers 10-22, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    21. Potters, Jan & Sefton, Martin & Vesterlund, Lise, 2005. "After you--endogenous sequencing in voluntary contribution games," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(8), pages 1399-1419, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebg:iesewp:d-0936. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Noelia Romero (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ienaves.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.