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Condition: BRAND NEW
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781788169554
Publisher: Profile Books
Overview:
The Unaccountability Machine is Dan Davies' acclaimed exploration of why markets, corporations and governments so often produce outcomes nobody actually wanted. Drawing on the forgotten work of cybernetics pioneer Stafford Beer, Davies argues that large organisations behave like artificial intelligences with logic of their own, detached from the people inside them. Sharp and rigorously researched, this paperback is essential reading for anyone trying to make sense of institutional failure, from financial crashes to bureaucratic gridlock, and why "the system" is so rarely held to account.
About the Book:
When a decision goes wrong inside a large organisation, it can feel impossible to say who was actually responsible. Dan Davies sets out to explain why, reviving the largely forgotten ideas of Stafford Beer, a mid-twentieth-century management theorist who proposed that organisations should be understood as artificial intelligences: systems capable of making decisions that diverge entirely from the intentions of the humans who created them. Beer's discipline of management cybernetics argued for built-in self-regulation and accountability, but it was widely ignored, a road not taken whose absence, Davies suggests, helps explain many of today's political and economic crises. Davies introduces the concept of the "accountability sink," the point at which a decision gets buried inside a rulebook so thoroughly that no individual can be blamed for the outcome, however disastrous. Combining a former regulatory economist's rigour with a journalist's eye for a story, he ranges across banking collapses, corporate scandals and government failures to show how process quietly replaces judgement. Praised as both funny and genuinely illuminating, the book has been longlisted for the FT & Schroders Business Book of the Year and named a New Statesman Book of the Year. It gives readers a genuinely new vocabulary for institutional dysfunction, one hard to stop noticing afterwards.
Key Benefits:
- Introduces the powerful, widely-praised concept of "accountability sinks" to explain institutional failure.
- Revives the neglected but highly relevant ideas of cybernetics pioneer Stafford Beer for a modern audience.
- Longlisted for the FT & Schroders Business Book of the Year and a New Statesman Book of the Year.
- Combines rigorous economic analysis with sharp, entertaining, journalistic storytelling.
- Essential reading for business leaders, policymakers and anyone puzzled by "the system."
About the Author:
Dan Davies is a writer and economist who spent years as a regulatory economist at the Bank of England and as an analyst for investment banks. As a journalist he has covered major financial scandals including the LIBOR and FX rigging affairs and the collapse of Anglo Irish Bank, writing for the Financial Times and the New Yorker. He is also the author of Lying for Money, an acclaimed account of financial fraud, and brings deep insider experience of markets and institutions to this book.
Why You'll Love This Non Fiction Read:
Funny, provocative and endlessly quotable, this is the rare economics book that changes how you see the world, turning frustrating everyday encounters with "the system" into something you can finally explain.
Please Note: Cover design may vary slightly from the image shown; this listing is for the UK paperback edition with ISBN 9781788169554.
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