Combining a promised reward with a threatened penalty: took a carrot-and-stick approach to the rehabilitation of juvenile offenders.
carrot-and-stick
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Dictionary:
car·rot-and-stick (kăr'ət-ən-stĭk') |
| Business Dictionary: Carrot and Stick |
Strategy often used in negotiations where one side offers the other something it wants while threatening negative sanctions if the other side does not comply with its requests. Thus a union could offer wage concessions in exchange for better workrule provisions while threatening to strike if no accommodation can be reached.
| Idioms: carrot and stick |
Reward and punishment used as persuasive measures, as in Management dangled the carrot of a possible raise before strikers, but at the same time waved the stick of losing their pension benefits. This term alludes to enticing a horse or donkey to move by dangling a carrot before it and, either alternately or at the same time, urging it forward by beating it with a stick. [Late 1800s]
| Wikipedia: Carrot and stick |
Carrot and stick (also "carrot or stick") is an idiom that refers to a policy of offering a combination of rewards and punishment to induce behavior. Some claim that this usage of phrase is erroneous, and that in fact comes from the figure of a carrot on a stick. In this case, the driver would tie a carrot on a string to a long stick and dangle it in front of the donkey, just out of its reach. As the donkey moved forward to get the carrot, it pulled the cart and the driver so that the carrot would always remain out of reach.
The earliest citation of this expression recorded by the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary is to The Economist magazine in the December 11, 1948, issue.
References
External links
- Paul Brians, Department of English, Washington State University “Carrot on a stick” vs. “the carrot or the stick.”
- EconPapers abstract for an experiment using this model "The Carrot or the Stick: Rewards, Punishments, and Cooperation"
- Behavioral Study comparing the effectiveness of the two models "The Carrot or The Stick"
- The Carrot and the Stick discussed in US Drug Policy "The Carrot & The Stick"
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Business Dictionary. Dictionary of Business Terms. Copyright © 2000 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Idioms. The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Carrot and stick". Read more |
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