Biological opportunism

Opportunism is the conscious policy and practice of taking advantage of circumstances – with little regard for principles, or with what the consequences are for others. Opportunist actions are expedient actions guided primarily by self-interested motives. The term can be applied to individual humans and living organisms, groups, organizations, styles, behaviours, and trends.

Opportunism or "opportunistic behavior" is an important concept in such fields of study as biology, transaction cost economics, game theory, ethics, psychology, sociology and politics.

Opportunism is the conscious policy and practice of taking selfish advantage of circumstances. Although human opportunism often has a strong negative (pejorative) moral connotation (in contrast to e.g. biological opportunism, used as a neutral scientific description), it may also be defined more neutrally as putting self-interest before other interests when there is an to do so, or flexibly adapting to changing circumstances to maximize self-interest (though usually in a way that negates some principle previously followed). Opportunism is sometimes also defined as the ability to capitalize on the mistakes of others: to utilize opportunities created by the errors, weaknesses or distractions of opponents to one's own advantage.

Somewhat confusingly, opportunism is sometimes also redefined by businessmen simply as the theory of discovering and pursuing opportunities. These businessmen are motivated by their dislike for the idea that there could ever be anything wrong with capitalizing on opportunities. According to this redefinition, "opportunism" is a euphemism for "entrepreneurship".

Taking a realistic or practical approach to a problem can involve "weak" forms of opportunism. For the sake of doing something that will work, or that successfully solves the problem, a previously agreed principle is knowingly compromised or disregarded - with the justification that alternative actions would, overall, have a worse effect.

In choosing or seizing opportunities, human opportunism is most likely to occur where:

Criticism of opportunism usually refers to a situation where beliefs and principles are tested or challenged.

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Wikipedia