by Max H. Bazerman, Jonathan Baron, and Katherine Shonk
(Basic Books)

In "You Can't Enlarge the Pie": Six Barriers to Effective Government, authors Max Bazerman, the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration at HBS, Katherine Shonk, an HBS research associate, and Jonathan Baron, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, argue that too many government decisions and initiatives are shaped by psychological biases and unproductive thinking habits. The result, they say, is a public-policy mindset that's geared to maintaining existing procedures and resources — the finite "pie" of the book's title. This adherence to the status quo often blocks out negotiations and tradeoffs that could benefit everyone.

The authors suggest that what public policy needs — and what a democracy's citizens must insist on — is the sort of approach to decision-making that MBA students are routinely exposed to in business schools. When management students learn to negotiate and solve problems, they are first trained to recognize their own biases and then to seek solutions that involve the least pain and the greatest potential advantage for all concerned. "Once they have been taught to analyze the likelihood of various consequences, these students learn that the best decisions are those that minimize expected costs and maximize expected benefits," the authors write. The best decisions typically are those that "enlarge the pie," thus creating value for all concerned. "Our core argument," the authors emphasize, "is that large gains can often only be achieved when citizens learn to accept small losses in return."

Standing in the way of this, however, are what the authors identify as six leading examples of muddled reasoning: "Do no harm" (in which misinformed attitudes about risk hinder attempts to make improvements); "Their gain is our loss" (the assumption that one's own group suffers if another benefits); "Competition is always good" (indulging in competition's wasteful aspects while shunning cooperation); "Support our group" (the irrational acceptance of special- interest groups); "Live for the moment" (condoning present behavior that negatively affects the future); and "No pain for us, no gain for them" (resisting change that, over time, would benefit the majority, out of concern that it might hurt a minority in the short term).

The authors' intent is to expose these fallacious attitudes in order, they write, "to encourage citizens to adopt a new way of thinking about political issues that will inspire them to work for positive social change." "Thinking and acting more rationally about politics," the authors conclude, "is a worthwhile goal for everyone."

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