Organizational Decision Making (Shapira, 1997)

Review
"[A] terrific book... It contains the seeds for numerous dissertations- questions begging to be examined more closely. Whether you simply want to understand current thought about organizational decision making or are looking for promising research opportunities, this book is the place to look." American Journal of Psychology

"Organizational Decision Making is a superb collection, perhaps the best [of its kind] to date...highly relevant to both business and law." Cass Sunstein, University of Chicago

"An excellent reflection of the field, containing many novel and compelling insights. I encourage all scholars of decision making to read the book and to engage in the debate about the nature and future of the field." Administrative Science Quarterly

"For any scholars who are interested in the process of decision making within organizations, Organizational Decision Making is required reading, for it covers the breadth of the field extremely well. " Contemporary Psychology

"Succeeds in offering the reader a varied perspective of organizational decision making....Should be well received in the fields of business and the behavioral sciences....Not only explains what research on organizational decision making can do now but also what it offers for the future." Applied Cognitive Psychology

Product Description
Decision making in organizations is often pictured as a coherent and rational process in which alternative interests and perspectives are considered in an orderly manner until the best choice is selected. Yet, as most experienced members of organizations will attest, real decision processes seldom fit such a description. This book brings together researchers who focus on cognitive aspects of decision processes, along with those who study organizational aspects such as conflict, incentives, power and ambiguity. These multiple perspectives are intended to further our understanding of organizational decision making. Contributors often cite specific cases, and all foundations of organizational decision making are covered in considerable detail.

p.12 The core ideas of bounded rationality are elementary and by now familiar. Rather than all alternatives and all information about consequences being known, information has to be discovered through search. The key scarce resource is attention; and theories of limited rationality are, for the most part, theories of the allocation of attention

p.12 decision makers learn what they should expect.

p.12-13 behavioral studies of individual decision making... have turned substantial parts of recent theories of choice into theories of information and attention, that is, into theories of the first guess.

p.17 Actual decisions in organizations, as in individuals, seem often to involve finding appropriate rules to follow.

p.26 In an exchange process, power comes either from having things that others want or from wanting things that others do not. [JLJ - put in paper] Thus, it comes from the possession of resources and from the idiosyncrasy of desires, rules, or identities.

p.27 Individuals attend to some things and thus do not attend to others. The attention devoted to a particular decision by a particular potential participant depends on alternative claims on attention.

p.81 Some issues get attention in organizations and others do not... Why is this so?

p.83 A strategic agenda refers to the set of issues that is receiving the attentional investment of decision makers at any point in time.

p.87 the strategic issues that absorb attention are ones that are perceived in such a way that individuals feel compelled to invest time in understanding and/or doing something about them.

p.91 attention allocation to some issues and not others comes from the existence and application of rules that are embedded in formal procedures, policies, or organizational norms... Thus, internal and external demands are sorted and directed by routines that determine whether or not these demands draw attention.

p.94 the allocation of attention is a dynamic process that proceeds through the continuous process process of variation, selection, and retention.

p.112 Bright young accountants and financial analysts seem to go endlessly to their superiors with bright young ideas for improving their firms' procedures or serving their customers better. The bosses often don't have the background to understand, and more often can't even conceive that an idea so important wouldn't have crossed their desks or minds before. So they reject the ideas, and keep things as they were and as they understand them. It is not that they are mean to the young or unopen to the new ideas. It is that they are trapped by their own knowledge of the world.

p.112 So what is power? This question is both easy and difficult to address. Defining power is easy. Power is potency, the ability to have an effect... We restrict our interest in power to the potencies of parties when they intend or seek certain effects on other parties with whom they are interdependent.

p.233 In both design and operation, healthy systems enjoy a creative tension between various conflicting pressures.

p.271 Attention allocation is the key to the process of decision making (March, 1988).

p.305 Whoever says what is... always tells a story

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