Review
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"Economic historian Jerry Muller delivers a riposte to
bean counters everywhere with this trenchant study of our
fixation with performance metrics."---Barbara Kiser, Nature
"A timely and important critique of the pervasive tendency to
define success in terms of quantifying human performance,
accountability and transparency, a trend that has invaded every
profession."--Paradigm Explorer
"For every quantification, there's a way of gaming it. So argues
this timely manifesto against measured accountability."--Kirkus
Reviews
"A short and highly readable account of the way such management
systems are undermining important institutions, such as
universities, schools, policing, charities and even
companies."---Luke Johnson, Sunday Times
"Finalist for the 2019 Hayek Prize, The Manhattan Institute"
"To his credit, Muller isn't interested only in documenting the
ways in which the metric fixation produces unintended
consequences. Beyond that, he wants, first, to work out what
causes this high level of dysfunction, and second, to identify
ways in which metrics might be used more productively."---Stefan
Collini, London Review of Books
"Many of us have the vague sense that metrics are leading us
astray, stripping away context, devaluing subtle human judgement,
and rewarding those who know how to play the system. Muller's
book crisply explains where this fashion came from, why it can be
so counterproductive and why we don't learn. It should be
required reading for any manager on the verge of making the
Vietnam body count mistake all over again."---Tim Harford,
Financial Times
"As Muller says 'anything that can be measured and rewarded will
be gamed.' Too many people appear oblivious to this basic fact of
life. A close reading of Muller's excellent, if somewhat brief,
introduction to the pitfalls of quantitative measurement should
set them right."---Edward Chancellor, Breakingviews
"There is also ample evidence, expertly summarised in Jerry
Muller's recent book, The Tyranny of Metrics, that metrics can be
counter-productive."--The Economist
"Muller . . . says that an over-reliance on metrics can lead us
to disproportionately value the things that are easiest to
measure. These and the many other criticisms of metric fixation
the author offers are well argued and will feel all too familiar
to teachers and school leaders alike. Shortly after I agreed to
review this title, Ofsted's chief inspector . . . gave a speech
explaining how she had recently read the book and how it was
influencing her own thinking. Having now had the chance to read
it myself, I think we should take this as a positive sign. My
hope is that others involved in school accountability, including
politicians, have the chance to consider its core
message."---James Bowen, Times Education Supplement
From the Back Cover
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"In this clear and compelling book, Jerry Muller shows how our
attempts to improve organizational outcomes through quantitative
measures have metastasized into a culture of gaming and
manipulation. Through carefully researched case studies on
education, care, and compensation, The Tyranny of Metrics
makes a convincing case that we need to restore judgment and
ethical considerations at a time when shallow quantification
threatens the integrity of our most important
institutions."--Rakesh Khurana, Harvard Business School
"Have you ever wondered why universities make the mistake of
hiring presidents with little or no experience in higher
education, or why, nine times out of ten, these foreign imports
fail? Then read Jerry Muller's new book and you will understand
such folly as one more instance of an unhappy, massive
trend--abandoning the situated judgment of experienced
professionals in favor of the supposedly objective judgment
promised (but not delivered) by the magic bullet of metrics:
standardized measures and huge data banks touted as generating
in and wisdom all by themselves. Muller dismantles this myth
in a brisk and no-nonsense prose that has this reader crying
'yes, yes' at every sentence."--Stanley Fish, author of Winning
Arguments and Think Again
"Quantification, once only a tool, has become a cult. I can
think of no better deprogrammer than Jerry Muller, whose renowned
skills in dissecting political and social doctrines are evident
here. The Tyranny of Metrics should be essential reading for
managers and the managed alike."--Edward Tenner, author of The
Efficiency Paradox: What Big Data Can't Do and Why Things Bite
Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences
"In The Tyranny of Metrics, Jerry Muller has brought to life the
many ways in which numerical evaluations result in deleterious
performance: in our schools, our universities, our hospitals, our
, and our businesses. This book addresses a major
problem."--George A. Akerlof, Nobel Prize-winning economist
"The Tyranny of Metrics is an important and accessible book
about a growing problem. It comes as close as anything I've read
to showing us how to break out of the dysfunctional cycle of
measuring, finding out that measuring doesn't get us where we
want to go, but then measuring some more."--David Chinitz, School
of Public , Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School
"Broad in and ambition, persuasively argued, and
engagingly written, The Tyranny of Metrics is a very compelling
book."--Mark Schlesinger, Yale University