opportunism
The opportunism ( Latin opportunus favorable "suitable") refers to the functional adaptation to the particular situation or location.
meaning
Opportune called "approached with" (literally), "located" (figurative), and refers to an opportunity - the opportune is going on, he uses a golden opportunity without regard to consequences or own values to his advantage. It is a mostly negative reception Term: Opportunism provides a convenient it deems expediency on the principle - and principles faithful. The term opportunity in turn denotes an opportunity or a strategy that is fundamentally directed towards it, without an evaluative component.
A weakened form of opportunism can be found in pragmatism or possibly also in realism . One can see the ideologues and oppositionists who take the party as the opposite pole to the opportunist . In this context , it is difficult to define or determine the transition between willingness to compromise and opportunism. Political opportunism may accept long-term disadvantages for its conformist stance in order to achieve short-term approval and often means giving up your own opinion - partially or completely - in favor of another opinion, which is given greater chances of general approval.
Biology and medicine
Organisms that are ecologically flexible, that is, that can cope well with different or fluctuating environmental conditions, are called opportunists or generalists . These environmental parameters include, for example, the supply of light and food, the ambient temperatures and, especially in the case of aquatic organisms, the salinity and the flow regime (see → Euryökie ). Also, the man is an opportunistic way. The opposite of an opportunist in the ecological sense is a specialist (see. → Stenökie ). Opportunists have the advantage of being able to use a wide range of natural resources, but at the price of not being able to make optimal use of any of these resources.
In epidemiology , opportunism describes the property of parasites , which are harmless in themselves , to become dangerous pathogens if the host has a weak immune system (see opportunistic pathogen ).
psychology
economy
In transaction cost theory , opportunism is understood to mean that the actors behave strategically towards their contractual partners and try to enforce their interests (also against the contractual norm), and do not shy away from cunning, deceit and deception ( Oliver E. Williamson ).
See also
literature
- Jonas Helbig: The opportunist. A genealogy. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 2015, ISBN 978-3-7705-5931-2
