When good people do bad things

Until very recently people in the financial world seemed primarily motivated to maximize profit overnight. In fact, the pursuit of immediate profits indeed seemed to be the solve drivers of their motivation making that a longer-term perspective was completely lacking. How did such narrow-minded culture survive for such a long time? Where did the idea of unlimited economic growth come from? How is it possible that supposedly smart people make short-sighted decisions that ultimately lead to financial disasters?

In this book, David De Cremer provides several illustrations of what went on during the financial crisis to show how human emotions and cognitive errors drove people to deceive themselves and put short-term thinking ahead of long-term thinking. Although the implementation of new rules and regulation systems may work in dealing with the aftermath of the financial crisis to some extent it is by no means the solution. It is more important to gather insights that help people develop their own moral compass in which intrinsic motivation and social responsibility become key aspects. To achieve this state of moral awareness, bankers and managers will have to arrive at a better understanding of why people do the things they do. For this reason a behavioural and psychological approach to the happenings in the financial crisis is much needed.