Sunday 4 September 2011

Simon, perhaps more than any other social scientist, enlightened the world about the darker side of decision making ie the irrefutability of the process of decision making to be minimally rational. Examine the statement in the context of Simon as a Classical Thinker.


Simon is a behaviourist

Simon developed 3 models of decision making - 
  • Social man who makes absolutely irrational decisions 
  • Economic man who makes absolutely rational decisions
  • Administrative man who makes boundedly rational decisions

Human decisions in the organisations are less than logical

Several factors operates in the bounded rationality –
  • organisational rules,
  • organisational environment,
  • irrational thinking based on hunch,
  • group think,
  • emotions,
  • limited capacity of the brain to analyse,
  • status quo orientation,
  • individual biases,
  • limited availability of information,
  • preference for safety,
  • preference for quick results,
  • Beliefs.
 This bounded rationality is universal

However Chris Argyris equates Simon as a classical thinker for over emphasizing the analysis of rationality and ignoring human behaviour in the organisations.

Conclusion: Simon in fact was the first person to highlight the behavioural tendency in the human decision making.

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