We create organizations because we need to get a job done--something we couldn't do alone--and join them because we're inspired by their missions (and our paycheck). But once we're inside, these organizations rarely feel inspirational. So where did it all go wrong?

In The Org, Ray Fisman and Tim Sullivan explain the tradeoffs that every organization faces, arguing that this everyday dysfunction is actually inherent to the very nature of orgs. The Org diagnoses the root causes of that malfunction, beginning with the economic logic of why organizations exist in the first...