Bazerman (a Harvard professor of business administration), Baron (a University of Pennsylvania professor of psychology) and Shonk (a Harvard research associate) have a promising idea for improving government. Drawing on "an approach that now dominates the curriculum of business schools," they declare, "Our core argument is that large gains can often only be achieved when citizens learn to accept small losses in return" as with vaccines, which save far more lives than they cost in fatal side effects. The authors devote separate chapters to each of six cognitive barriers they claim prevent us from making such wise trade-offs. Some are clearly related to their main theme "do no harm" describes the rationale opposing vaccination; but others notably "competition is always good" require more elaboration, which is generally lacking. Furthermore, they sometimes criticize behavior in one chapter and praise or simply overlook it in another indicating a schematized approach that ignores crucial sources of policy-making difficulty. One chapter touts free trade between countries while another decries cities' ruinous competitive spending on sports arenas, without acknowledging a similar dynamic when labor, consumer and environmental laws are construed as "trade barriers." The authors' cognitive focus obscures genuine objective dilemmas, while their psychologizing is often implausible. They say campaign finance reform has low priority as an ill-defined "process issue" that people can't grasp because like most business negotiators they don't think ahead. But most citizens grasp political corruption, which seems similarly to be a "process issue." Despite some obviously promising ideas, the relentless reductionism oversimplifies and psychologizes problems that have complex, historical, real-world roots.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Product Description
Two of the country's leading experts in business negotiation and decision-making show how their methods can be used to solve the problems of government.
Why do our government leaders continually make decisions and craft policies that everybody knows are foolish? It's not because they're stupid or corrupt, say the authors, but because our leaders, like the rest of us, are trapped in foolish and unproductive habits of thinking. "You Can't Enlarge the Pie" analyzes the unspoken assumptions that lead to bad policy, wasted resources, and lost lives, and shows exactly why they're wrong. With fascinating case studies and clear, compelling analysis, they dissect six beliefs that serve as psychological barriers to effective government:
1. Do no harm
2. Their gain is our loss
3. Competition is always good
4. Support our group
5. Live for the moment
6. No pain for us, no gain for them
By freeing ourselves from the narrow way we evaluate our government leaders, say the authors, we can learn to judge their performance just as we judge that of business leaders: by the overall health of their organizations.
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