Opportunism
The first impression of "opportunism" for me is taking opportunity as it is possible to improve one's situation, which might bring negative outcomes for others, or might bring benefits for oneself without hurting others. But people sometimes act irrationally. They sometimes let opportunity go away regardless of the potential benefits. The reasons are various. Some are driven by morality and education of being a good citizen. And others might have an expectation for the future: they believe better opportunity would show up, thus giving up the current chances and wait for the "one".I remembered that a few years ago, probably in 2008, there was a huge catastrophic earthquake in China, in which about 70,000 people died. It was totally a disaster. Since the location that the earthquake occurs is around by mountains, adding that it occurred during midnight, many people didn't get a chance to escape to a safe place. Hundreds of thousands of relief supplies are evacuated and a lot of people voluntarily drove there to help with rescuing. News from the
disaster-striken area area are updated all day on TV news. One day my dad got a calling from a journalist from a famous press. The reason is that my parents donated 100,000 RMB (more than 15,000 dollars) a few days ago. The journalist asked whether he can interview them and wrote an article to post on the newspaper. I actually didn't have an idea at that time. But when I thought about it now when I grew up, I felt that it was actually a great opportunity. My parents could take advantage of that to become some sort of "famous", or at least took the honor of that behavior. Actually this would also be helpful for their business at that time. If they are interviewed as donators, this would definitely bring positive impression for their company. But they didn't.
The reason for their behavior seems not fitting any of given possibilities. In this circumstance, the opportunistic behavior is not potentially hurting anyone. And it is apparently not unethical to accept the interview and took the honor. Also, they are not expecting any better opportunity in the future. In this case, the action is irrational. Actually I have asked them the reason. What they told me was that
charity was not related to any benefits that it might bring. Whereas the benefits individual could bring to community or society matter instead. Thus, for my parents decision, the behavior is brought out because of the belief of non-necessity of certain behavior. For them, the benefit of being "famous", or "honored" was not necessary, or not the purpose of this action. So they don't have the motivation to do so. Another explanation is that, they might just feel uncomfortable or nervous to be interviewed. Thus the opportunity cost of being interviewed made them hesitate and step back.
So there are a lot of different reasons for not taking advantage of an opportunity. As mentioned in class, people might choose to do the right thing because of internal moral motivation. Or in many circumstances, people wait for a better opportunity in order to get a more desirable outcome. For example, I would choose to wait for another few minutes for the next bus or subway to avoid rush hours, given the advantage that I could go back home earlier. Another example might be I chose to take online courses to get prepared for my second major and not taking an internship opportunity that was given. But for other circumstances, people might be not so interested in the benefits that the opportunity brings, leading to the behavior of letting opportunity go. Some people might feel worried about the process to get the benefits, or even reject the opportunity because of fear to fail. But when I take a step back and look at all these reasons, there might be a common reason for them. When people hold a belief, no matter in the category of morality, or a belief about whether their would be better chances, or their own evaluation of the benefits and opportunity cost, they make assumption about whether this opportunity is worthwhile to take, then make decision to reject or not. So I think the opportunism is that people take advantage of the situation currently. But some people delay this to later, or reject because they think it is not worthwhile. Their evaluation of the opportunity is the cause.
This is an interesting story. It was not clear, however, whether your parents charitable contribution was intended for the earthquake survivors and the families of the victims. I took that to be the case based on the rest of what you wrote, but you didn't say that explicitly.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing that you didn't write about, but might have to make the story more understandable, is whether if the press had come to your parents to do a story on their business, unrelated to the charitable act, if they would have been happy to comply with the press request or not. The not being opportunistic would be strongest if you parents would have talked to the press in this case. But if they would not, then your parents are just people who don't want to bring attention on themselves, regardless of the circumstance. There are many people like that but for such people to be shy in the presence of possible attention doesn't quite fit the prompt.
Finally, you might have written a bit from the perspective of the recipients of your parents charity. If they heard about your parents in the news, would they have been angry about what your parents did? The possibility of such anger is a reason not to bring attention on oneself in this manner.
Yes I should have explicitly pointed out that. And actually when I was writing about the story I felt hesitated whether it is strong enough. As you mentioned, if that reporter was willing to report about their business, this would be a great opportunism example. It was long time ago after all, I just wrote what I remembered.
DeleteIn terms of the recipients, I actually didn't think about that. The reaction of recipients would be another explanation. If that's the case, then the action actually would bring some cost, which my parents would not take the risk of it. Thank you so much for pointing out that!