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bookshelf BLIND SPOTS AUTHORS: Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel PUBLISHER: (Princeton University Press, US$24.95) MOST PEOPLE aren't as ethical as they'd like to think. Not because they're bad people, but because when dilemmas arise they aren't aware of their intrinsic biases, or they don't realize that their emotions are guiding their decisions, or they aren't even aware that the situation has an ethical dimension. The emerging field of behavioral ethics seeks to understand why people react to quandaries in certain ways—even ways directly counter to their own moral standards. Without an understanding of such human impulses, the authors say, corporate training programs and business school classes will never teach executives to change their ways. "Most of us behave ethically most of the time," write Bazerman of Harvard and Tenbrunsel of the University of Notre Dame. "At other times, we are aware when we behave unethically. This book focuses on more dangerous situations: the times when we unwittingly behave unethically." Well-written, stuffed with intriguing research, and more than a little unnerving, this book will make readers reconsider some of their most entrenched beliefs. THE ECONOMICS OF ENOUGH AUTHOR: Diane Coyle PUBLISHER: Princeton University Press PRICE: US$24.95 WORLD ECONOMIES are strug- gling to emerge from economic turmoil, but they won't succeed unless all nations work together to solve enormous, complex problems. Coyle, a consultant and visit- ing professor at the University of Man- chester, identifies sev- eral key obstacles to economic recovery: a worldwide erosion of trust in govern- ments, banks, and other institutions; growing inequities in the distribu- tion of wealth; high national debt; climate change; and aging popula- tions. These crises are playing out against an economy where rapid changes in information and tech- nology communications (ICT) are outpacing any government's abil- 66 July/August 2011 BizEd ity to regulate them. To salvage the present without mortgaging the future, Coyle proposes difficult solutions, from revising govern- ment policies to adapting "institu- tions in general to the structure of the economy as it is emerging in the ICT age." Her book not only lays out the challenges ahead, but also describes "the terrain of much-needed new politics, which will be crucial if there's to be any hope of shaping economies and societies that will serve people bet- ter in the future." VALUE AUTHORS: Tim Koller, Richard Dobbs, and Bill Huyett PUBLISHER: Wiley PRICE: US$29.95 COMPANY LEADERS find it easy to be seduced into believing that new and much-hyped market strategies will help them grow their businesses. But three partners from McKinsey & Co. sound a warning: "Financial engineering, excessive leverage, the idea during inflated boom times that somehow old rules of economics no longer apply—these are the misconcep- tions upon which the value of companies are destroyed and entire economies falter." They're convinced that the best measures of company value are four unchanging cornerstones, all of them straightforward, if hardly simple. The core of value corner- stone, for instance, states that value cre- ation is driven by a combination of growth and return on invested capital, and the authors painstak- ingly show how this is a much better measure than the earnings and earnings growth metrics so beloved by analysts. Other corner- stones—conserving value, dealing with outside expectations, and analyzing the value brought by the owners—are similarly explained and dissected. This is a dense, detailed, brainy book that gives readers much to consider.