The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions - and How The World Lost its Mind - Hardcover

Davies, Dan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1788169549 ISBN 13: 9781788169547

Publisher: Profile Books, 2024

Synopsis

Part-biography, part-political thriller, The Unaccountability Machine is a rousing exposé of how management failures lead organisations to make catastrophic errors

About this title

About the Author

Dan Davies is a former regulatory economist at the Bank of England and analyst for a number of investment banks. His career has seen him tackle all manner of financial crookedness, including the LIBOR and FX scandals, the collapse of Anglo Irish Bank and the Swiss Nazi gold scandal. He has written for the Financial Times and the New Yorker among other publications.

From the Back Cover

When we avoid taking a decision, what happens to it? In The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies examines why markets, institutions and even governments systematically generate outcomes that everyone involved claims not to want. He casts new light on the writing of Stafford Beer, a legendary economist who argued in the 1950s that we should regard organisations as artificial intelligences, capable of taking decisions that are distinct from the intentions of their members.

Management cybernetics was Beer's science of applying self-regulation in organisational settings, but it was largely ignored - with the result being the political and economic crises that that we see today. With his signature blend of cynicism and journalistic rigour, Davies looks at what's gone wrong, and what might have been, had the world listened to Stafford Beer when it had the chance.

'A corporation, or a government department isn't a conscious being, but it is an artificial intelligence. It has the capability to take decisions which are completely distinct from the intentions of any of the people who compose it. And under stressful conditions, it can go stark raving mad.'

Edition details

• Publisher: Profile Books
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1788169549
• ISBN 13: 9781788169547
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304