People are often naturally suspicious of leaders who display an overreliance on number crunching: they are considered bean counters who lack people skills; their decisions are seen as penny-wise and pound-foolish.
To describe someone as “calculating” is almost never a compliment.
So why do business schools emphasize an almost purely quantitative approach to leadership and decision making?
Moreover, is there empirical evidence to support the intuition that a calculating person is more likely to act selfishly or unethically?
J. Keith Murnighan, a professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School, recently investigated these questions with his collaborators Long Wang of the City University of Hong Kong and Chen-Bo Zhong of the University of Toronto.
“We were interested in what drives people’s unethical choices, and we also wanted to examine the fact that business schools emphasize [the] quantitative analysis of problems,” Murnighan says. “We put the two questions together, because one of our goals is to train and grow effective leaders.”
“When someone acts selfishly or unethically, it’s hard to create and maintain systems that are consistently fair, efficient, and sustainable.”
Murnighan’s own training in social psychology provides a perspective on decision making that traditional economics often overlooks.
Read more: http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/are_bean_counters_more_selfish/#ixzz3909hyL2B
