Seize Your Leadership Day: Decisions, Decisions
by Miki Saxon
Usually I only offer up one link when the reading is heavy, but today I have two.
The first is a book I read about on Expert CEO.
How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer is an exploration of “the neural machinery behind our decision-making processes: a network of dopamine-sensitive cells in the brain’s emotional and cognitive centers, which tie feelings and reason together so closely that the two operate almost as one. According to Lehrer, correct decisions require an awareness of both halves of the equation — and a perfect balance of visceral response and cognitive knowledge.”
I’m so far behind on my reading that I don’t know when I’ll get to it, but if one of you wants to do a guest review for Leadership Turn I’d be delighted.
The heavy reading comes from Max Bazerman, the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. A working paper “shows that seemingly innocuous aspects of the environment can promote the decision to act ethically or unethically. Key concepts include:
- Once people behave dishonestly, they are able to morally disengage, setting off a downward spiral of future bad behavior and ever more lenient moral codes.
- However, this slippery slope can be forestalled with simple measures, such as honor codes, that increase people’s awareness of ethical standards.
- Moral disengagement is not always a necessary condition leading to dishonesty, but it may in fact result from unethical behavior.
- The decision to behave dishonestly changes levels of moral disengagement, and the awareness of ethical standards affects the decision to engage in unethical behavior.”
The paper is downloadable and I think you’ll find it interesting.
As always, your thoughts on the subject are of great interest, so please share them.
Your comments—priceless
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Image credit: flickr
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:23 am
“How We Decide”? Given that the reductionist author must surely have meant “How Our Decisions Are Made for Us” by our neurons and stuff, I feel compelled to assume that the author didn’t actually write the book. It was written for him by brainwork over which he could not possibly have had any control.
The cult of scientism moves on!
It’s not clear to me how those neurons, as convergent as they may be, decided to write that book about themselves in the first place. And how the editor’s neurons (and stuff) decided for her that there was a market for the author’s neurons’ musings.
And to what or whom are the royalties to be sent, since the author was merely a victim of his neurons, merely a mouthpiece?
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:43 am
Hi Lee, I’m not sure what annoyed you so. The book isn’t the first to explain that decisions are both logical and emotional and that a person should work to be aware of both.
I’m not saying that I always agree with the conclusions drawn from current brain research, but then I didn’t need the research to reach the conclusion that logic + emotion = decision and that personal awareness of the process, i.e., which is which, has value.
So what got to you?