Trust and Honesty: America's Business Culture at a Crossroad by Tamar Frankel
| Author | Joshua Getzler |
| Published date | 01 July 2007 |
| Date | 01 July 2007 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2007.00659.x |
REVIEWS
Ta m a r F ra n k e l, Trust and Honesty: America’s Business Culture at a Crossroad,
ix þ253 pp, hb d19.9 9, New York: Oxford Un iversity Press, 20 06
Soldiersi n acombat platoon are trained to internalizea normof intense self-sacri-
¢cing loyalty to the group. They will take on suicidal risks in order to protect
their comrades. Such altruism maximizes the survival chances not only of the
group as a unit but of each individual in the group, who can trust in the protec-
tion eacho¡ers to the other. But if an individual’s ownwelfarebecomes the metric
of the decision tosacri¢ce, soldiers may hangback when sacri¢ce is required, and
so perhaps few or none will survive. The lesson is that a rational or calculative
approach to trust and reliance focussing on individual returns may well defeat
itself; a commitment other than rational self-interest is required if a bene¢cial
equilibrium is to be maintained.
1
One does not expect a warrior’s level of personal honour and dedication to the
group amongst corporate managers and professionals working in today’simpersonal,
competitive, pro¢t-driven markets.Yetwe may expect some sense of professionalism,
of public vocation, of acceptance of immovable norms of trust, honestya ndcoopera-
tion, of limits on pro¢t maximization, if well-functioning markets are to be sus-
tained. In Tamar Frankel’s disturbing and brilliant book on Trust and Honesty she
forcefully poses the question of how limits can be imposed to prevent self-interested
business interactions collapsing into fraud and con£ict. She answers that there must
1 The model of non-instrumental normativity rooted in the emotions as a rivalto the standard eco-
nomic hypothesis of rationality now forms a powerful strand in moderncognitive scie nce.The Eco -
nomics Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, who developed many of his insights as a young army
psychologistin the 1950sscree ning recruits forcombat and leadership roles, writes of his ¢rst meeting
with his main collaborator AmosTverskyas follows:
My ¢rst memoryof Amos goes back to1957, when someone pointed out to me a thin and hand-
some lieutenant, wearing the red beret of the paratroopers, who had just taken the competitive
entrance exam to the undergraduate program in Psychology at Hebrew University. The hand-
some lieutenant looked verypale, I remember. He had beenwounded.
The paratrooper unit to which he belonged had been performing an exercise with live ¢re in
front of the general sta¡ of the Israel Defense Forces and all the military attaches. Amos was a
platooncommander. He sent one of his soldiers carrying a long metal tube loaded with an explo-
sive charge,which was to be slid under the barbed wire of the position they were attacking,and
was to be detonated to create an opening for the attacking troops.The soldier moved forward,
placed the explosive charge, a ndl it the fuse. And then he froze, standing upright in the grip of
some unaccountable attack of panic.The fus e was short and the soldier was certain ly about to be
killed. Amos leapt frombeh ind the rock hewas usi ngfor cover, ran tothe soldier, and managed
to jump at him and bring h im down just before the charge exploded.Th is was how he was
wounded.Those who have been soldiers will recognize this act as one of almost unbelievable
presence of mind and bravery.
‘Daniel Kahneman ^ Autobiography’, in L esPrix Nobel.TheNobelPrizes2002, EditorToreFra
ºngs-
myr,[Nobel Foundation], Stockholm,2003, availableon web at http://nobelprize.org.
r2007 The Authors.Journal Compilation r2007 The Modern Law Review Limited.
Published by BlackwellPublishing, 9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ,UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
(2007) 70(4)MLR 701^712
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