Leaders

Ulrich F. Zwygart offers an essential insight to the financial crisis that provides ample food for thought. He criticizes homo oeconomicus, the model of individual rationality, and contrasts it with the ideal of critical reflective rationality. This is about reason-based thinking, that involves a limitation of one's own activities and the evaluation of the subsequent cost of decisions. The author introduces twelve famous managers from the financial services, such as Richard Fuld, Fred Goodwin, Jon Corzine and Marcel Ospel, analyzes their actions based on neurological findings, social- and cultural-science, psychological and economic insights and describes conflicting challenges such as egomania, eroticism, experiences, emotions, one-dimensionality, successes, agents and rapture. Subsequently he raises the question of responsibility: Who is accountable for the development of top managers and how can ethical conduct be implemented in the field of management?