Swarthmore professor Barry Schwartz says rules and incentives are an "insurance policy against disaster, but [they don't] produce excellence." In his recent book, Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing, Schwartz and coauthor Kenneth Sharpe, also a Swarthmore professor, say that what is needed is not more bureaucracy. Instead, society needs the Aristotelian ideal that trumps all others -- practical wisdom. Knowledge@Wharton recently sat down with Schwartz to discuss why individuals fail to do the right thing, what practical wisdom looks like in practice and what organizations can do to regain people's trust.
