Nudge Me If You Can! Why Order Ethicists Should Embrace the Nudge Approach

Nikil Mukerji () and Adriano Mannino ()
Additional contact information
Nikil Mukerji: LMU München
Adriano Mannino: LMU München

Journal of Business Ethics, 2023, vol. 186, issue 2, No 4, 309-324

Abstract: Abstract Order ethicists favour incentives as a means for making moral progress but largely ignore an alternative method, namely, nudging, which has come to prominence through the work of behavioural scientists in recent years. In this paper, we suggest that this is a mistake. Order ethicists have no reason to ignore nudging as an alternative method. Arguments they might press against it include worries about paternalism, manipulation, autonomy, and unintended bad consequences. These are, we argue, largely unfounded insofar as they involve misconceptions or affect incentives as well. In particular, we contend that only some, but not all, nudges are paternalistic, manipulative, and autonomy-reducing. The same is true of incentives. Also, both nudges and incentives can have unintended bad consequences. Therefore, order ethicists cannot endorse arguments against nudges without undermining their favourable view of incentives. In addition, there might be positive reasons to prefer nudges to incentives, for instance, when they are more freedom-preserving, more effective, cheaper, easier to implement, or less inequality-inducing than the latter.

Keywords: Incentives; Manipulation; Nudging; Order ethics; Paternalism; Unintended consequences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-022-05214-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:186:y:2023:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-022-05214-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-022-05214-x

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().