Complicit

BOOK REVIEW
Complicit: How We Enable the Unethical and How to Stop
by Max H. Bazerman 2022

About the Author
Max Bazerman is the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, where his research and teaching focus on negotiation, behavioral economics, and ethics. His new book, Better, Not Perfect: A Realist’s Guide to Maximum Sustainable Goodness, offers concrete advice on how we can all make the world better by maximizing our pleasure and minimizing our pain.

Max is the author, coauthor, or co-editor of 19 books and over 200 research articles and chapters. Other recent books include The Power of Experiments (with Michael Luca), The Power of Noticing, Negotiation Genius (with Deepak Malhotra), Judgment in Managerial Decision Making (with Don Moore), and Blind Spots (with Ann Tenbrunsel).

An award-winning scholar and mentor, Max has consulted, taught, and lectured with hundreds of organizations all over the world, from corporations to governments to nonprofits. His former doctoral students have accepted positions at leading business schools throughout the United States. Max has received an honorary doctorate from the University of London (London Business School). He was named one of Ethisphere’s 100 Most Influential in Business Ethics and a Daily Kos Hero for going public about how the Bush Administration corrupted the RICO Tobacco trial.
Visit http://www.people.hbs.edu/mbazerman

About the Book
“Complicity is one of the most important ethical issues of our time―yet one of the least explored. Max Bazerman’s careful, humane analysis, filled with terrific stories, data, and concrete lessons, is an invaluable contribution to a better world.”―Cass R. Sunstein, author of Sludge: What Stops Us from Getting Things Done and What to Do about It

“Complicit is a masterpiece and should be required reading for every aspiring leader. Through captivating stories, Bazerman shows us how easy it is to support wrongdoers and wrongdoing. Happily, he also reveals steps we can all take to avoid being complicit.”―Katy Milkman, bestselling author of How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be

“Max Bazerman has convinced me that it takes a village to do wrong―and that many of us live in that village. Complicit may be Bazerman’s most personal and powerful book yet.”―Dolly Chugh, author of The Person You Mean to Be and A More Just Future

What all of us can do to fight the pervasive human tendency to enable wrongdoing in the workplace, politics, and beyond

It is easy to condemn obvious wrongdoers such as Elizabeth Holmes, Adam Neumann, Harvey Weinstein, and the Sackler family. But we rarely think about the many people who supported their unethical or criminal behavior. In each case there was a supporting cast of complicitors: business partners, employees, investors, news organizations, and others. And, whether we’re aware of it or not, almost all of us have been complicit in the unethical behavior of others. In Complicit, Harvard Business School professor Max Bazerman confronts our complicity head-on and offers strategies for recognizing and avoiding the psychological and other traps that lead us to ignore, condone, or actively support wrongdoing in our businesses, organizations, communities, politics, and more.

Complicit tells compelling stories of those who enabled the Theranos and WeWork scandals, the opioid crisis, the sexual abuse that led to the #MeToo movement, and the January 6th U.S. Capitol attack. The book describes seven different behavioral profiles that can lead to complicity in wrongdoing, ranging from true partners to those who unknowingly benefit from systemic privilege, including white privilege, and it tells the story of Bazerman’s own brushes with complicity. Complicit also offers concrete and detailed solutions, describing how individuals, leaders, and organizations can more effectively prevent complicity.

By challenging the notion that a few bad apples are responsible for society’s ills, Complicit implicates us all―and offers a path to creating a more ethical world.