A New Model for Ethical Leadership／道德型领导

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　　Autonomous vehicles will soon take over the road. This new technology will save lives by reducing driver error, yet accidents will still happen. The cars’ computers will have to make difficult decisions: When a crash is unavoidable, should the car save its single occupant or five pedestrians? Should the car prioritize saving older people or younger people? What about a pregnant woman—should she count as two people? Automobile manufacturers need to reckon with such difficult questions in advance and program their cars to respond accordingly.

　　In my view, leaders answering ethical questions like these should be guided by the goal of creating the most value for society. Moving beyond a set of simple ethical rules (“Don’t lie,” “Don’t cheat”), this perspective—rooted in the work of the philosophers Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Peter Singer—provides the clarity needed to make a wide variety of important managerial decisions.

　　For centuries philosophers have argued over what constitutes moral action, theorizing about what people should do. More recently behavioral ethicists in the social sciences have offered research-based accounts of what people actually do when confronted with ethical dilemmas. These scientists have shown that environment and psychological processes can lead us to engage in ethically questionable behavior even if it violates our own values. If we behave unethically out of self-interest, we’re often unaware that we’re doing so—a phenomenon known as motivated blindness. For instance, we may claim that we contribute more to group tasks than we actually do. And my colleagues and I have shown that executives will unconsciously overlook serious wrongdoing in their company if it benefits them or the organization.

　　My approach to improving ethical decision-making blends philosophical thought with business-school pragmatism. I generally subscribe to the tenets of utilitarianism, a philosophy initially offered by Bentham, which argues that ethical behavior is behavior that maximizes “utility” in the world—what I’ll call value here. This includes maximizing aggregate well-being and minimizing aggregate pain, goals that are helped by pursuing efficiency in decision-making, reaching moral decisions without regard for self-interest, and avoiding tribal behavior (such as nationalism or in-group favoritism). I’m guessing that you largely agree with these goals, even if you hew to philosophies that focus on individual rights, freedom, liberty, and autonomy. Even if you are committed to another philosophical perspective, try to appreciate the goal of creating as much value as possible within the limits of that perspective.

　　In general, the decisions endorsed by utilitarianism align with most other philosophies most of the time and so provide a useful gauge for examining leadership ethics. But like other philosophies, strict utilitarianism doesn’t always serve up easy answers. Its logic and limits can be seen, for example, in the choices facing manufacturers of those self-driving cars. If the goal is simply to maximize value, the automobiles should be programmed to limit collective suffering and loss, and the people in the car shouldn’t be accorded special status. By that calculus, if the car must choose between sparing the life of its single occupant and sparing the lives of five people in its path, it should sacrifice the passenger.

　　Clearly this presents a host of issues—What if the passenger is pregnant? What if she’s younger than the pedestrians?—and no simple utilitarian answer for how best to program the car exists.

　　Furthermore, manufacturers could reasonably argue that people would be less likely to buy a car that doesn’t prioritize their lives. So car companies that didn’t prioritize the passenger would be in a weaker competitive position than those that did—and car buyers might well opt for less-safe cars that are driven by humans. Nevertheless, utilitarian values can be usefully applied in considering what sort of regulation could help create the greatest benefit for all.

　　Although the autonomous-vehicle case represents a tougher ethical decision than most managers will ever face, it highlights the importance of thinking through how your decisions, large and small, and the decisions of those you manage, can create the most value for society. Often people think of ethical leaders as those who adhere to the simple rules I’ve mentioned. But when leaders make fair personnel decisions, devise trade-offs that benefit both sides in a negotiation, or allocate their own and others’ time wisely, they are maximizing “utility”—creating value in the world and thereby acting ethically and making their organizations more ethical as a whole.

　　Consider two questions posed by the psychologist Daniel Kahneman and colleagues:How much would you pay to save 2,000 migrating birds from drowning in uncovered oil ponds?How much would you pay to save 200,000 migrating birds from drowning in uncovered oil ponds?

　　Their researchshows that people who are asked the first question offer about the same amount as do people who are asked the second question. Of course, if our goal is to create as much value as possible, a difference in the number of birds should affect how much we choose to pay. This illustrates the limitations of our ethical thinking and suggests that improving ethical decision-making requires deliberately making rational decisions that maximize value rather than going with one’s gut.

　　The concept of bounded rationality, which is core to the field of behavioral economics, sees managers as wanting to be rational but influenced by biases and other cognitive limitations that get in the way. Scholars of decision-making don’t expect people to be fully rational, but they argue that we should aspire to be so in order to better align our behavior with our goals. In the ethics domain we struggle with bounded ethicality—systematic cognitive barriers that prevent us from being as ethical as we wish to be. By adjusting our personal goals from maximizing benefit for ourselves (and our organizations) to behaving as ethically as possible, we can establish a sort of North Star to guide us. We’ll never reach it, but it can inspire us to create more good, increasing well-being for everyone. Aiming in that direction can move us toward increasing what I call maximum sustainable goodness: the level of value creation that we can realistically achieve.

　　Trying to create more value requires that we confront our cognitive limitations. As readers of Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow know, we have two very different modes of decision-making. System 1 is our intuitive system, which is fast, automatic, effortless, and emotional. We make most decisions using System 1. System 2 is our more deliberative thinking, which is slower, conscious, effortful, and logical. We come much closer to rationality when we use System 2. The philosopher and psychologist Joshua Greene has developed a parallel two-system view of ethical decision-making: an intuitive system and a more deliberative one. The deliberative system leads to more-ethical behaviors. Here are two examples of strategies for engaging it:

　　First, make more of your decisions by comparing options rather than assessing each individually. One reason that intuition and emotions tend to dominate decision-making is that we typically think about our options one at a time. When evaluating one option (such as a single job offer or a single potential charitable contribution), we lean on System 1 processing. But when we compare multiple options, our decisions are more carefully considered and less biased, and they create more value. We donate on the basis of emotional tugs when we consider charities in isolation; but when we make comparisons across charities, we tend to think more about where our contribution will do the most good. Similarly, in research with the economists Iris Bohnet and Alexandra van Geen, I found that when people evaluate job candidates one at a time, System 1 thinking kicks in, and they tend to fall back on gender stereotypes. For example, they are more likely to hire men for mathematical tasks. But when they compare two or more applicants at a time, they focus more on job-relevant criteria, are more ethical (less sexist), hire better candidates, and obtain better results for the organization.

　　The second strategy involves adapting what the philosopher John Rawls called the veil of ignorance. Rawls argued that if you thought about how society should be structured without knowing your status in it (rich or poor, man or woman, Black or white)—that is, behind a veil of ignorance—you would make fairer, more-ethical decisions. Indeed, my recent empirical research with Karen Huang and Joshua Greene shows that those who make ethical decisions behind a veil of ignorance do create more value. They are more likely, for instance, to save more lives with scarce resources (say, medical supplies), because they allocate them in less self-interested ways. Participants in our study were asked whether it was morally acceptable for oxygen to be taken away from a single hospital patient to enable surgeries on nine incoming earthquake victims. They were more likely to agree that it was when the “veil” obscured which of the 10 people they might be. Not knowing how we would benefit (or be harmed) by a decision keeps us from being biased by our position in the world.

　　A related strategy involves obscuring the social identity of those we judge. Today more and more companies eliminate names and pictures from applications in an initial hiring review to reduce biased decision-making and increase the odds of hiring the most-qualified candidates.

　　Which is more important to you: your salary or the nature of your work? The wine or the food at dinner? The location of your home or its size? Strangely, people are willing to answer these questions even without knowing how much salary they’d need to forgo to have more-interesting work, or how much more space they could have if they lived five miles farther from work or school, and so forth. The field of decision analysis argues that we need to know how much of one attribute will be traded for how much of the other to make wise decisions. Selecting the right job, house, vacation, or company policy requires thinking clearly about the trade-offs.

　　The easiest trade-offs to analyze involve our own decisions. Once two or more people are engaged in a decision and their preferences differ, it’s a negotiation. Typically, negotiation analysis focuses on what is best for a specific negotiator. But to the extent that you care about others and society at large, your decisions in negotiation should tilt toward trying to create value for all parties.

　　This is easy to see in a common family negotiation—one in which I’ve been involved hundreds of times. Imagine that you and your partner decide one evening to go out to dinner and then watch a movie. Your partner suggests dinner at an upscale Northern Italian restaurant that has recently reopened. You counterpropose your favorite pizza joint. The two of you compromise on a third establishment, which has good Italian food and pizza that’s a bit fancier than what your preferred pizza place offers. During dinner your partner proposes that you watch a documentary; you counterpropose a comedy; and you compromise on a drama. After a good (but not great) evening, you both realize that because your partner cared more about dinner and you cared more about the movie, choosing the upscale Northern Italian restaurant and the comedy would have made for a better evening.

　　This comparatively trivial example illustrates how to create value by looking for trade-offs. Negotiation scholars have offered very specific advice on ways to find more sources of value. These strategies include building trust, sharing information, asking questions, giving away value-creating information, negotiating multiple issues simultaneously, and making multiple offers simultaneously.

　　If you’re familiar with negotiation strategy, you appreciate that most important negotiations involve a tension between claiming value for yourself (or your organization) and creating value for both parties—enlarging the pie. Even when they know that the size of the pie isn’t fixed, many negotiators worry that if they share the information needed to create value for all, the other party may be able to claim more of the value created—and they don’t want to be suckers. All the leading books on managerial negotiations highlight the need to create value while managing the risk of losing out.

　　Whereas many experts would define negotiation ethics in terms of not cheating or lying, I define it as putting the focus on creating the most value (which is of course helped by being honest). You don’t ignore value claiming but, rather, consciously prevent it from getting in the way of making the biggest pie possible. Even if your counterpart claims a bit of extra value as a result, a focus on value creation is still likely to work for you in the long run. Your losses to the occasional opportunistic opponent will be more than compensated for by all the excellent relationships you develop as an ethical negotiator who is making the world a bit better.

　　People tend not to think of allocating time as an ethical choice, but they should. Time is a scarce resource, and squandering it—your own or others’—only compromises value creation. Conversely, using it wisely to increase collective value or utility is the very definition of ethical action.

　　Consider the experience of my friend Linda Babcock, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who noticed that her email was overflowing with requests for her to perform tasks that would help others but provide her with little direct benefit. She was happy to be a good citizen and do some of them, but she didn’t have time to take on all of them. Suspecting that women were being asked more often than men to perform tasks like these, Linda asked four of her female colleagues to meet with her to discuss her theory. At that gathering the I Just Can’t Say No club was born. These female professors met socially, published research, and helped one another think more carefully about where their time would create the most value.

　　Their concept has implications for all of us who claim we’re short on time: You can consider a request for your time as a request for a limited resource. Rather than making intuitive decisions out of a desire to be nice, you can analyze how your time, and that of others, will create the most value in the world. That may free you to say no, not out of laziness but out of a belief that you can create more value by agreeing to different requests.

　　Allocating tasks among employees offers managers other opportunities to create value. One helpful concept is the notion of comparative advantage, introduced by the British political economist David Ricardo in 1817. Many view it as an economic idea; I think of it as a guide to ethical behavior. Assessing comparative advantage involves determining how to allow each person or organization to use time where it can create the most value. Organizations have a comparative advantage when they can produce and sell goods and services at a lower cost than competitors do. Individuals have a comparative advantage when they can perform a task at a lower opportunity cost than others can. Everyone has a source of comparative advantage; allocating time accordingly creates the most value.

　　Ricardo’s concept can be seen in many organizations where one individual is truly amazing at lots of things. Picture a tech start-up where the founder has the greatest technical ability but it’s only a bit greater than that of the next-most-talented technical person. Yet the founder is dramatically more effective than all other employees at pitching the company to investors. She has an absolute advantage on technical issues, but her comparative advantage is in dealing with external constituencies, and more value will be created when she focuses her attention there. Many managers instinctively leverage their and their employees’ absolute advantage rather than favoring their comparative advantage. The result can be a suboptimal allocation of resources and less value creation.

　　Whatever your organization, I’m guessing it’s quite socially responsible in some ways but less so in others, and you may be uncomfortable with the latter. Most organizations get higher ethical marks on some dimensions than on others. I know companies whose products make the world worse, but they have good diversity and inclusion policies. I know others whose products make the world better, but they engage in unfair competition that destroys value in their business ecosystem. Most of us are ethically inconsistent as well. Otherwise honest people may view deception in negotiation with a client or a colleague as completely acceptable. If we care about the value or harm we create, remembering that we’re likely to be ethical in some domains and unethical in others can help us identify where change might be most useful.

　　Andrew Carnegie gave away 90% of his wealth—about $350 million—to endow an array of institutions, including Carnegie Hall, the Carnegie Foundation, and more than 2,500 libraries. But he also engaged in miserly, ineffective, and probably criminal behavior as a business leader, such as destroying the union at his steel mill in Homestead, Pennsylvania. More recently, this divide between good and bad is evident in the behavior of the Sackler family. The Sacklers have made large donations to art galleries, research institutes, and universities, including Harvard, with money earned through the family business, Purdue Pharma, which made billions by marketing—and, most experts argue, overmarketing—the prescription painkiller OxyContin. By 2018 OxyContin and other opioids were responsible for the deaths of more than 100 Americans a day.

　　All of us should think about the multiple dimensions where we might create or destroy value, taking credit when we do well but also noticing opportunities for improvement. We tend to spend too little time on the latter task. When I evaluate various aspects of my life, I can identify many ways in which I have created value for the world. Yet I can also see where I might have done far better. My plan is to do better next year than last year. I hope you will find similar opportunities in your own life.

　　Leaders can do far more than just make their own behavior more ethical. Because they are responsible for the decisions of others as well as their own, they can dramatically multiply the amount of good they do by encouraging others to be better. As a leader, think about how you can influence your colleagues with the norms you set and the decision-making environment you create.

　　People follow the behavior of others, particularly those in positions of power and prestige. Employees in organizations with ethical leaders can be expected to behave more ethically themselves. One of my clients, a corporation that gets rave reviews for its social-responsibility efforts, created an internal video featuring four high-level executives, each telling a story about going above the boss’s head at a time when the boss wasn’t observing the ethical standards espoused by the corporation. The video suggested that questioning authority is the right thing to do when that authority is destroying societal value. By establishing norms for ethical behavior—and clearly empowering employees to help enforce it—leaders can affect hundreds or even thousands of other people, motivating and enabling them to act more ethically themselves.

　　Leaders can also create more value by shaping the environment in which others make decisions. In their book Nudge, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein describe how we can design the “architecture” surrounding choices to prompt people to make value-creating decisions. Perhaps the most common type of nudge involves changing the default choice that decision-makers face. A famous nudge encourages organ donation in some European nations by enrolling citizens in the system automatically, letting them opt out if they wish. The program increased the proportion of people agreeing to be donors from less than 30% to more than 80%.

　　Leaders can develop new, profitable products and make the world a better place through effective nudging. After publishing a paper on ethical behavior, for example, I received an email from a start-up insurance executive named Stuart Baserman. His company, Slice, sells short-term insurance to people who run home-based businesses. He was looking for ways to get policyholders to be more honest in the claims process, and we worked together to develop some nudges.

　　We created a process whereby claimants use a short video taken with a phone to describe a claim. This nudge works because most people are far less likely to lie in a video than in writing. Claimants are also asked verifiable questions about a loss, such as “What did you pay for the object?” or “What would it cost to replace it on Amazon.com?”—not “What was it worth?” Specific questions nudge people to greater honesty than ambiguous questions do. And claimants are asked who else knows about the loss, because people are less likely to be deceptive when others might learn about their corruption. These nudges not only reduce fraud and make the insurance business more efficient but also allow Slice to benefit by helping people to be ethical.

　　New ethical challenges confront us daily, from what algorithm to create for self-driving cars to how to allocate scarce medical supplies during a pandemic. As technology creates amazing ways to improve our lives, our environmental footprint becomes a bigger concern. Many countries struggle with how to act when their leaders reject System 2 thinking and even truth itself. And in too many countries, finding collective value is no longer a national goal. Yet we all crave direction from our leaders. I hope that the North Star I’ve described influences you as a leader. Together we can do our best to be better.

　　道德型领导的新模式

　　

　　自动驾驶汽车会很快接管道路。这种新技术会通过减少驾驶员失误来救人一命，然而，事故仍然会发生。这种汽车的电脑将被迫做出艰难的抉择：当撞车不可避免时，汽车是该救车上唯一的乘员还是五位行人？汽车应该优先保护老年人还是年轻人的性命？孕妇该怎么办——她应该算作两人吗？汽车制造商应该提前考虑这些难题，并为它们的汽车设计应对程序。

　　在我看来，回答这些伦理道德问题的领导者们，应该以为社会创造最大价值这一目标为指导思想。这种观点源于哲学家杰里米·边沁（Jeremy Bentham）、约翰·斯图尔特·米尔（John Stuart Mill）和彼得·辛格（Peter Singer）的著作，它突破了一套简单的道德准则（“不要撒谎”“不要欺骗”），提供了做出各种重要管理决策所需的清晰思路。

　　数个世纪以来，哲学家们对于什么是道德行为争论不休，对于人们应该做的事进行了理论建构。最近，社会科学中的伦理学家提出了基于研究的解释，对人们面对伦理困境时的实际行为进行了说明。这些科学家已经证明，环境和心理过程可能会致使我们做出存在道德问题的行为，即使这有违我们自己的价值观。如果我们出于私利而行为不轨，我们通常都意识不到自己在这样做——这是一种动机性失明现象。比如，我们可能会声称自己对团队的贡献比实际做的更多。我和我的同事已经证明，如果对他们或公司有利，高管们会无意识地忽略他们公司中严重的不道德行为。

　　实现价值最大化

　　我改进道德决策的方法是将哲学思想与商学院的实用主义结合起来。我总体上赞同功利主义的原则，这是边沁最初提出的哲学，认为道德的行为就是在世上实现“功利”最大化的行为——我在此称之为价值。这包括最大限度地提升总体幸福，最大限度地减少总体痛苦，通过追求决策效率来帮助实现目标，不计私利地实现道德决策以及避免部落行为（比如民族主义或群体偏好）。我推测，即使你奉行的哲学注重个人权利、自由和自主，你也会在很大程度上赞同这些目标。即使你信奉另一种哲学观点，也请在那种观点的范围内试图理解尽可能创造最大价值这一目标。

　　一般说来，功利主义支持的决策在多数时候与其他大多数哲学并无二致，因而为检验领导道德伦理观提供了有用的依据。可是与其他哲学一样，严格的功利主义并不总是会给出轻松的答案。比如，它的逻辑与局限性在那些自动驾驶汽车制造商面临的选择中一览无余。如果目标仅仅是实现价值最大化，那么汽车的程序设计就应该是限制集体的损失和痛苦，车内的人就不应该被给予特殊地位。照此算法，如果汽车必须在救车上一人之命与救道上五人之命之间进行选择，它应该牺牲乘客。

　　显然，这会带来一大堆问题——如果乘客是孕妇怎么办？如果她比行人年轻怎么办？——对于如何最好地为汽车设计程序问题，没有简单的功利主义答案。

　　此外，制造商可能会合理地辩称，人们不太可能买一辆不把自己生命放在首位的汽车。因此，不优先考虑乘客的企业竞争地位会低于优先考虑乘客的企业——而购车者很有可能选择由人驾驶的安全性较低的人类驾驶汽车。然而，功利主义价值观可以有效地用来考虑什么样的监管会有助于为所有人创造最大的利益。

　　虽然自动驾驶汽车的案例所代表的道德决策比多数管理者会面临的道德决策更难，但是它却凸显出全盘考虑的重要性——你的大小决策以及你管理的那些人的决策将如何为社会创造最大的价值。人们通常认为道德型领导就是那些坚持我所提及的简单准则的人。可是当领导者做出公平的人事决定、在谈判中策划出惠及双方的权衡方案，或者明智地分配自己及他人时间的时候，他们就是在实现“功利”最大化——在世上创造价值，从而以道德的方式行事，让他们的企业整体上更道德。

　　克服障碍

　　看看心理学家丹尼尔·卡内曼（Daniel Kahneman）及其同事提出的两个问题：

　　1. 为了不让2000只迁徙的候鸟溺死于敞露的油池，你愿意出多少钱？

　　2. 为了不让20万只迁徙的候鸟溺死于敞露的油池，你愿意出多少钱？

　　他们的研究显示，被问及第一个问题的人提供的资金数量与被问及第二个问题的人几乎相同。当然，如果我们的目标是创造尽可能多的价值，鸟的数量差异应该会影响到我们选择出资的数量。这说明了我们道德思维的局限性，而且表明，改进道德决策需要有意识地做出理性决定，实现价值最大化而不是跟着感觉走。

　　有限理性的概念是行为经济学领域的核心，它认为管理者希望具有理性，但却受到偏见和其他妨碍性认知局限的影响。研究决策的学者们并不指望人们完全理性，可是他们认为，我们应该有这样的追求，以便更好地让我们的行为与目标保持一致。在伦理道德领域，我们与有限道德性作斗争——妨碍我们如自己希望的那样有道德的系统性认知障碍——抗争。通过调整我们的个人目标，从实现我们自己（和我们企业）利益最大化调整为在行为上尽可能合乎道德，我们就可能建立起一种可以指引我们的北极星。我们永远不能到达那里，但它能够激励我们为每一个人创造更多的美好，增加幸福感。目标瞄准这个方向可以让我们的行动迈向我称之为最可持续的善德：我们可以真正实现的价值创造水平。

　　欲创造更多的价值，我们必须正视自己的认知局限性。正如卡内曼《思考，快与慢》（Thinking, Fast and Slow）一书的读者所知的，我们有两种截然不同的决策模式。系统1是我们的直觉系统，这个系统速度快、无意识、不费力、情绪化。我们的多数决定是用系统1做出的。系统2是我们更慎重的思维，它更慢、有意识、费力气、合逻辑。我们在使用系统2时更接近理性。哲学家、心理学家乔舒亚·格林（Joshua Greene）对道德决策提出了一种平行的双系统观点：一个直觉系统和一个更慎思的系统。慎思系统导致更具道德的行为。以下是针对这一观点的两个策略实例：

　　首先，通过比较选择而非单独评估的方式来做出更多的决定。直觉和情感通常会支配决策的一个原因是，我们通常一次只考虑一个选项。当我们评估一个选项的时候（比如，单独一份工作邀请或单独一次潜在的慈善捐赠），我们依靠系统1来处理。可是当我们比较多个选项时，我们的决定会得到更仔细的考虑，偏见更少，它们就会创造更多的价值。当我们孤立地考虑各慈善机构时，我们的捐赠是基于情感拉锯；可是当我们对慈善机构进行横向比较时，我们通常会更多地考虑我们的捐赠在哪里才能发挥最大用处。同样，在与经济学家艾里斯·博内特（Iris Bohnet）和亚历山德拉·范吉恩（Alexandra van Geen）的研究中，我发现，当人们一次评估一名求职者时，系统1的思维就开始发挥作用，而且他们通常会仰赖性别偏见。比如，他们更有可能雇用男性来完成数学任务。可是当他们同时比较两个或多个求职者时，他们会更关注与工作相关的标准，更符合道德规范（不那么像性别歧视主义者），录用更优秀的应聘者，为企业获得更好的结果。

　　第二种策略涉及运用哲学家约翰·罗尔斯（John Rawls）所称的无知之幕。罗尔斯认为，如果你在不知道自己在社会中所处地位（富人还是穷人、男人还是女人、黑人还是白人）的情况下思考社会应该如何构建——即，在无知之幕后面——你会做出更公平、更合乎道德的决定。事实上，我最近与凯伦·黄（Karen Huang） 和乔舒亚·格林的实证研究表明，那些在无知之幕背后做出合乎道德决定的人的确创造了更多价值。比如，他们更有可能用稀缺的资源（比如，医用品）拯救更多的性命，因为他们分配资源的方式不那么自私自利。我们研究的参与者被问及这样一个问题，为了能够给9名送到医院来的地震受害者实施手术，取走一名住院患者的氧气在道德上是否可以接受。当“幕”遮掩了他们可能是这10人中的哪一位时，他们更倾向可以接受。不知道我们会从一个决定中如何受益（或受害），可以让我们不会因自己在世界上的地位而产生偏见。

　　一个相关的策略是隐去被评判人的社会身份。如今，越来越多的企业在招聘初审中删除了求职申请中的姓名和照片，来减少带偏见的决定，增加录用最具资质人选的几率。

　　通过权衡创造价值

　　下面哪个对你更重要：你的薪水还是你的工作性质？晚餐时的葡萄酒还是食物？你家的地理位置还是房子大小？奇怪的是，即使不知道自己需要放弃多少薪水才能得到更有意思的工作，或者不知如果住的地方离单位或学校再远五英里，他们拥有的空间会有多大变化，人们也愿意回答这些问题。决策分析界认为，我们需要知道一种属性在多大程度上与另一种属性进行权衡才能做出明智的决定。选择合适的工作、住房、假期或公司政策需要思路清晰地权衡得失。

　　最容易分析的得失取舍包括我们自己的决策。一旦两个或更多的人参与一项决策，而他们的喜好各不相同，这就成了谈判。通常，谈判分析重点关注的是对特定谈判者最有利的方面。而就你关心的他人及全社会而言，你在谈判中的决定应该倾向于努力为各方创造价值。

　　这一点很容易在普通的家庭协商中看到——我已经参与了数百次这样的协商。设想一下，你和你的伴侣某晚决定外出就餐，然后看一场电影。你的伴侣建议去一家最近重新开张的北意大利高档餐厅，而你反过来提议去你最喜欢的比萨快餐店。你们俩达成妥协，去了第三家店，这家店有好吃的意大利食物和比萨，比你最爱的那家比萨店供应的食品更高档一些。就餐期间，你的伴侣提议你们看一部纪录片，你却提出看喜剧电影，你们达成的妥协是看戏剧。在度过了一个美好（但并非妙不可言）的夜晚之后，你们俩都意识到，由于你的伴侣更在意晚餐，而你更在意电影，选择北意大利高档餐厅和喜剧电影本会让你们过一个更美好的夜晚。

　　这个相对微不足道的例子表明了如何通过寻求权衡取舍来创造价值。研究谈判的学者对于寻找更多价值源泉的途径提出了非常具体的建议。这些策略包括建立信任、共享信息、提出问题、透露价值创造信息、同时就多个问题进行谈判以及同时做出多个提议。

　　如果你熟悉谈判策略，你就会明白，最重要的谈判涉及为自己（或你的公司）争取价值与为双方创造价值——做大蛋糕——之间的矛盾。即使在知道蛋糕的大小并不固定时，许多谈判者还是担心，如果共享了为所有人创造价值所需的信息，对方也许就主张获得更多创造出来的价值——而他们可不希望上当受骗。所有关于管理谈判的主要书籍都强调，在管理失败风险的同时创造价值的必要性。

　　虽然许多专家会从不欺骗或不撒谎的角度来定义谈判道德，但是我对它的定义是将关注重点放在创造最大价值上（诚实当然有助于此）。你非但不会忽视价值主张，反而会有意识地防止它阻碍你做出最大的蛋糕。即使对方会因此而要求获得一点额外价值，从长远来看，对价值创造的重视仍然有可能会给予你回馈。作为让世界变得更美好的有道德的谈判者，你所建立的所有优质关系会大大弥补你在机会主义对手面前的损失。

　　利用时间创造价值

　　人们通常不把时间分配当成道德选择，但是他们应该这样做。时间是稀缺资源，浪费你自己或他人时间只会损害价值创造。反之，明智地利用时间来增加集体价值或效用才是道德行为的真正定义。

　　看看我朋友卡内基梅隆大学（Carnegie Mellon University）教授琳达·巴布科克（Linda Babcock）的经历。她收到很多带着任务的电子邮件，这些任务有助于他人，但并不会给她带来直接好处。她很乐意做一名好公民，执行了部分任务，但她没有时间承担所有任务。琳达怀疑女性被要求执行这种任务的频率比男性高，于是邀请四位女性同事与她会面，讨论她的推测。就在那次聚会上，“我就是无法拒绝”（I Just Can’t Say No）俱乐部诞生了。这些女教授举行社交聚会，发表研究，帮助彼此更仔细地思考她们的时间在什么地方可以创造最大的价值。

　　她们的理念对所有声称自己时间紧迫的人都有启示：你可以把对时间的需求看作一种对有限资源的需求。你可以分析你的以及他人的时间如何在世上创造最大的价值，而不是凭做个好人的直觉愿望做出决定。这可以让你获得说不的自由，不是出于懒惰，而是出于通过不同要求来创造更大价值的信念。

　　在员工之间分配任务为管理者创造价值提供了更多机会。英国政治经济学家戴维·里卡多（David Ricardo）1871年提出的比较优势是一个实用概念。许多人认为这是一种经济理念，我则把它当成道德行为指南。评估比较优势包括让每个人或每家企业衡量如何把时间用在创造最大价值的地方。当企业能够以比竞争对手更低的成本生产和销售产品与服务时，它们就具备了比较优势。当个人能够比他人以更低的机会成本来执行任务时，他们就具备了比较优势。每一个人都有比较优势的来源，相应地分配时间可以创造最大的价值。

　　里卡多的概念在许多企业中都可以看到。在这些企业中，一个个体在很多事情上极其出色。想象一下，一家科技初创企业的创始人拥有最优秀的技术能力，不过只比第二有才华的技术人员略胜一筹。然而，这位创始人在向投资者宣传公司方面远比其他所有员工更有成效。她在技术问题上具有绝对优势，但她的比较优势在于其与外部支持者打交道，当她将注意力集中在这方面时，就会创造更多的价值。许多管理者本能地利用自己和员工的绝对优势，而不是倚重他们的比较优势。结果可能是资源配置不佳，价值创造较少。

　　整合道德自我

　　不管你的企业是何性质，我猜它在某些方面很有社会责任感，但在其他方面社会责任感不足，而你可能对后者感到不快。多数企业在某些方面的道德评分高于其他方面。我知道有些企业的产品让世界变得更糟，可是他们却拥有很好的多元化与包容性政策。我也知道其他一些企业的产品让世界变得更好，可是他们却致力于不公平竞争，破坏了他们商业生态系统中的价值。我们多数人在道德上也不是从一而终，否则诚实的人在与客户或同事谈判时可能认为欺骗是完全可以接受的。我们可能在某些领域是道德的，而在其他领域则不道德，如果我们在意我们创造的价值或制造的伤害，记住这一点则可以帮助我们确定在哪些方面进行变革最有用。

　　安德鲁·卡内基（Andrew Carnegie）将他90%的财富——约3.5亿美元——捐赠给了包括卡内基音乐厅（Carnegie Hall）、卡内基基金会（the Carnegie Foundation）在内的一系列机构和2500多家图书馆。可是作为企业领导人，他也从事过吝啬、无效甚至可能是犯罪的行为，比如，他破坏了宾夕法尼亚州霍姆斯特德他自己钢铁厂的工会。最近，这种善恶之分在萨克勒（Sackler）家族的行为中表现得很明显。萨克勒家族向美术馆、研究机构和包括哈佛在内的大学捐赠了大笔资金，这些资金是通过其家族企业普渡制药（Purdue Pharma）赚取的。普渡制药通过营销——多数专家认为是过度营销——处方止痛药奥施康定（OxyContin）赚得了数十亿美元。截至2018年，奥施康定和其他阿片类药物每天导致了100多名美国人死亡。

　　我们所有人都应该想想我们在很多方面都可能创造或破坏价值，在我们做得很好时，应该获得嘉奖，但也要注意改进的机会。我们通常在后一项任务上花的时间太少。当我在评估我人生的各个方面时，我能够发现自己为世界创造价值的许多方式。然而，我也能够看到自己在哪些方面本可以做得更好。我的计划是明年比过去的一年做得更好。我希望你会在自己的生活中发现同样的机会。

　　提升身为领导者的影响力

　　领导者能做的远不止让自己的行为更合乎道德。由于他们既要为自己的决定负责，也要为他人的决定负责，所以通过鼓励他人变得更好，他们可以大大增加自己行为带来的好处。作为领导者，想想你如何才能利用你制定的规范以及你创造的决策环境来影响你的同事。

　　人们会效法他人的行为，尤其是那些位高权重的人。企业的领导有道德，员工自己才有望表现出合乎道德的行为。我的一个客户因在社会责任方面的努力而受到盛赞，该公司制作了一段四位高管为主角的内部视频，每位高管都讲述了在老板未能遵守公司所信奉的道德标准的时候越过老板行事的故事。这段视频表明，当权威摧毁社会价值的时候，质疑权威是正确的做法。通过建立道德行为规范——并明确授权员工帮助执行规范——领导者可以影响数以百计甚至数以千计的人，激励并促使他们行事更合乎道德。

　　领导者还可以通过塑造他人的决策环境来创造更大的价值。理查德·塞勒（Richard Thaler）和卡斯·森斯坦（Cass Sunstein）在他们的《激励》（Nudge）一书中描述了人们如何能够围绕各种选择设计“架构”，以促使大家做出创造价值的决策。也许最常见的激励形式包括改变决策者面临的默认选择。在一些欧洲国家，一项鼓励器官捐献的著名激励措施是系统帮公民自动登记注册，如果他们愿意也允许他们选择退出。这项计划将同意捐献器官的人数比例从不到30%提高到80%以上。

　　领导者可以通过开发、推动可赢利的新产品，让世界变得更加美好。比如，我在发表了一篇关于道德行为的论文之后收到了一封来自初创保险公司高管斯图尔特·巴泽尔曼（Stuart Baserman）的邮件。他所在的Slice公司向经营家庭企业的人出售短期保险。他在寻找让投保人在索赔过程中更加诚实的方法，我们一起合作制定了一些激励措施。

　　我们创建了一个流程，索赔人使用手机拍摄的短视频来描述索赔。这一激励措施行之有效，因为相较于书面形式，多数人在视频中说谎的可能性要小得多。索赔人还会被问及有关损失的可核实的问题，比如“你买这件物品花了多少钱？”或者“在亚马逊网站上重新购买要花多少钱？”——而不是问“这东西值多少钱？”具体的问题比模棱两可的问题更能让人诚实。而且索赔人会被问及还有谁对损失情况知情，因为当他人可能知道他们的贪腐行为时，人们就不太可能骗人。这些激励措施不仅减少了欺诈行为、提高了保险业务的效率，还让Slice公司通过帮助人们遵守道德而获益。

　　我们每天都面临新的道德挑战，从为自动驾驶汽车创建何种算法到如何在疫情期间分配稀缺的医用物资。随着科技创造出惊人的方式来改善我们的生活，我们的环境足迹成为了更让人关注的问题。当他们的领导人拒绝系统2思维，甚至拒绝事实本身时，许多国家都在为如何采取行动而痛苦挣扎。在太多国家，寻找集体价值不再是国家目标。然而，我们都渴望领导者为我们指明方向。我希望我所描述的北极星能影响身为领导的你。携手共进，我们可以尽力做得更好。马克斯·巴泽曼是哈佛商学院工商管理Jesse Isidor Straus教授，著有《更好，但不完美：现实主义者的最可持续美德指南（Better, Not Perfect: A Realist’s Guide to Maximum Sustainable Goodness）（哈珀商业出版社，2020年）。