A theme I see in some writing about sustainable business is that we need to get beyond win-wins. Although I get the point — business cases won’t deliver everything — I worry that this isn’t the right message. Win-wins are good for stakeholders, and we haven’t found all the win-wins yet. As such, I’m not…
Category: Decision Making
Being Fair To People You Don’t Agree With
Being fair to people you don’t agree with is a really challenging task. After all, from your viewpoint, they are wrong. It can be pretty easy to see the holes in their arguments. Indeed, we can be really great at that. Although we are generally not so talented at taking apart our own arguments. When…
Time Prices Are Useful But Not Everything
Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley have a book, Superabundance. This discusses how prosperity has increased and what this means for pessimistic views of the world. The book is published by the Cato Institute. This is a right-wing think tank in the US, although the institute did not endorse Donald Trump’s view of the US in…
Is It Marketing? Who Cares?
Women traditionally face disadvantages in business. These can be especially pronounced in some societies. There is good reason to want to change this, not least the moral argument. That said, it is often helpful to go beyond the moral argument. What impact does empowering/hiring female micro-entrepreneurs have on society? Is it a zero-sum game, where…
Have You Got A Causal Effect?
Causation is a tricky thing. I remember discussing different conceptions of causality in undergrad and can’t say I’ve grasped it yet. In some ways, it seems like an easy question — we have lay theories of what causes something else everyday. Still, push harder and things get murky pretty quickly. Giving up isn’t an option…
Research Shows Not To Believe Claims That Science Shows
A second and final post on Alex Edmans’ May Contain Lies, looks at some advice he gives and highlights some of his useful stories. The key thing the general reader might want to take from the book is that claims such as ‘science shows’ are nonsense. Remember, research shows not to believe claims that science…
Understanding How We React To Evidence
We often like to see ourselves as objective observers of reality. This isn’t really how we see the world, nor is it how we describe the world to others. Alex Edmans has a book that helps us in understanding how we react to evidence. Evidence For The Benefits/Challenges Of Sustainable Business Alex Edmans is best…
People Are Generally Reasonable Decision-Makers
An interesting discussion in behavioral science is the nature of humans as decision-makers. There often seems to be an assumption in the literature that people are terrible decision-makers. Consumers, members of the public, and voters are seen as battered by a host of errors and biases. This is partly because papers showing people making a…
Negative Externalities Reduce Public Welfare
Christoper Marquis has a follow-up to his book on the B Corp movement, see here. This has many of the same qualities I admired in the earlier book. The best bits explain how business can be better. He has some excellent examples where businesses are making a positive contribution to the world. That said, the…
Helping Experts Perform Consistently
I have recently read Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto. It is a few years old now (2009) but it still has a lot to say about the way the world works as well as Gawande’s aim of helping experts perform consistently. Do Experts Really Need Checklists? Gawande is a doctor and his main area of…
