MACHINES: FRIEND OR FOE? YOU DECIDE

摘要

The Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek devoted his Nobel Memorial Lecture in 1974 to a discussion of what he called the "pretence of knowledge". "As a profession we have made a mess of things," he confessed, blaming the failure of economists to provide better policy guidance on a misguided propensity "to imitate as closely as possible the procedures of the brilliantly successful physical sciences". Given the nature of social phenomena, Hayek went on, applying science to them was actually unscientific; in such areas, science in the traditional sense probably can't contribute much. Exactly the same mistake has been made in management. From the 1970s onward, management theorists concentrated on simplifying anything that couldn't be expressed scientifically - ie as numbers and equations. So out went ethics and morality. Then - with maths being unable to model the common sense view that companies prospered when they took care of employees, customers and the communities they operate in, as well as investors - an elaborate theoretical structure was erected to justify the idea that maximising shareholder value was management's true north.