The Logic of Failure: Why Things Go Wrong and What We Can Do to Make Them Right - Hardcover

Dorner, Dietrich

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805041605 ISBN 13: 9780805041606

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co, 1996

Synopsis

An explanation of why and how, with our high intelligence and vast knowledge, humans continue to make catastrophic mistakes is accompanied by a concise handbook on how to "go right."

About this title

About the Author

Dietrich Dorner is a professor of psychology at the University of Bamberg.

Reviews

The Chernobyl atomic-plant explosion, observes Dorner, was entirely due to human error involving the breaking of safety rules by a team of experts who reinforced one another's puffed-up sense of competence. This German psychology professor believes people court failure through sloppy or ingrained mental habits, whether the mistakes involve cleaning dead fish out of a garden pool, adding rooms to a schoolhouse, launching economic development programs in Africa or forecasting oil prices or the scope of the AIDS epidemic. Things go wrong, according to Dorner, because we focus on just one element in a system complicated by interrelationships; we apply corrective measures too aggressively or too timidly; we ignore basic premises, overgeneralize, follow blind alleys, overlook potential side effects and narrowly extrapolate from the moment, basing our predictions of the future on those aspects of the present that bother or delight us the most. This ingenious manual will assist problem-solvers in all fields.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A challenging, though preliminary, look at the difficulties of decision making, exploring how and why bad decisions are made. From G”del's incompleteness theorem to chaos and quantum theory, much of 20th-century thought has focused on underscoring the inextricable complexities of the universe and, thus, the inevitable inadequacies of knowledge. Now D”rner (Psychology/Univ. of Bamberg). a winner of Germany's highest science prize, the Leibnitz Award, makes his own contribution to the study of complexity by demonstrating just how difficult and problematic decision making can be. Happily, his methodology is both elegant and revealing. He has constructed a series of computer simulations in which the test subject might take on the role of mayor of a small town or district commissioner in charge of an arid region in Africa. Carte blanche is given to the subject struggling to deal with problems arising from such matters as population, resources, unemployment, and crop yields. Some people fail spectacularly, and some do a pretty good job, and the reasons are nearly always the same and surprisingly simple, at least in the abstract: ``What matters is not, I think, development of exotic mental capabilities . . . There is only one thing that does in fact matter, and that is the development of our common sense.'' D”rner adds that we must also learn to think in terms of time (both forwards and backwards) and the complex interrelationships within systems. Of course, models are always suspect because they tend to be reductive. But if D”rner is right, the implications here are substantial, for he has created a basic blueprint for testing decision making skills and a broad model for improving them. The corporate types who quest perpetually after the latest management techniques will almost certainly seize upon D”rner's work. But this is not so much a ``how-to'' guide as a provocative and important road map for years of future scientific experiment and investigation. (88 b&w illustrations) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Things going wrong is an all-too-common modern management experience. Pressed for time, an administrator makes a hasty decision that remedies the problem but creates myriad new problems for someone else. Dorner (psychology, Univ. of Baumberg, Germany), an authority on cognitive behavior, questions whether or not our habits of thought measure up to the systemic demands of profound problems such as environmental degradation, nuclear weapons build-up, terrorism, and overpopulation. Using computer-simulated "real world" scenarios, he measured his test subjects's problem-solving performances over time, and, not surprisingly, discovered that people court failure in predictable patterns?from simple confusion and misperception to short attention spans and unwillingness to change tactics. All is not lost, however, for Dorner suggests that despite the repeated failure, we can learn to recognize defective management behaviors and correct them. Dorner's "only the facts" approach is refreshing; he offers clear arguments, convincing evidence, and well-reasoned conclusions. One of the best management titles of the year, this is a necessary addition to both psychology and management collections of all types.?David R. Johnson, Fayetteville P.L., Ark.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805041605
• ISBN 13: 9780805041606
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 222