Primer on Decision Making: How Decisions Happen

by James G. March, Chip Heath

Building on lecture notes from his acclaimed course at Stanford University, James March provides a brilliant introduction to decision making, a central human activity fundamental to individual, group, organizational, and societal life. March draws on research from all the disciplines of social and behavioral science to show decision making in its broadest context. By emphasizing how decisions are actually made -- as opposed to how they should be made -- he enables those involved in the process to understand it both as observers and as participants.

March sheds new light on the decision-making process by delineating four deep issues that persistently divide students of decision making: Are decisions based on rational choices involving preferences and expected consequences, or on rules that are appropriate to the identity of the decision maker and the situation? Is decision making a consistent, clear process or one characterized by ambiguity and inconsistency? Is decision making significant primarily for its outcomes, or for the individual and social meanings it creates and sustains? And finally, are the outcomes of decision processes attributable solely to the actions of individuals, or to the combined influence of interacting individuals, organizations, and societies? March's observations on how intelligence is -- or is not -- achieved through decision making, and possibilities for enhancing decision intelligence, are also provided.

March explains key concepts of vital importance to students of decision making and decision makers, such as limited rationality, history-dependent rules, and ambiguity, and weaves these ideas into a full depiction of decision making.

He includes a discussion of the modern aspects of several classic issues underlying these concepts, such as the relation between reason and ignorance, intentionality and fate, and meaning and interpretation.

This valuable textbook by one of the seminal figures in the history of organizational decision making will be required reading for a new generation of scholars, managers, and other decision makers.

Genres: Management, Business, Leadership, Nonfiction, Psychology

289 pages, Hardcover

First published May 23, 1994

About the author

James Gardner March was an American sociologist who was professor at Stanford University and the Stanford Graduate School of Education, best known for his research on organizations, his A behavioral theory of the firm and organizational decision making.

Reviews

[Ian Fleischmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much like the title states, it's a primer on decision making. If you've read other books on the subject like Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions or Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions or even classics like Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes or even Thinking, Fast and Slow then this book will be review.

That being said, March does a good job consolidating individual and group decision-making concepts with common fallacies, biases, and heuristics. If you don't have time for the other books above (which you should, because they are great) then March will suffice.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an extremely helpful orientation to the scholarly study of decision-making. It emphasizes two main models, "logic of consequences" (rational choice decision-making) and "logic of appropriateness" (rule-based or role-based decision-making). These models operate differently. For example, the logic of consequences uses weighted expectations of the future to make an optimal (or at least satisficed) choice; it has no particular ethical or moral grounding so lying is a strategic move. The logic of appropriateness draws on rules learned from past experiences to make an identity-fulfilling choice; its ethics come from the "kind of person" the decision-maker chooses to be in selecting the rules of decision-making.

From these bases, the book subsequently develops the ideas of organizational decision-making, which adds layers of complications, and interpretive decision-making, which is largely about finding meaning. It ends with a discussion of how decision engineers might intervene to improve decision-making.

Woven into the book are various discussions of the ways ambiguity and uncertainty affect decisions, how decisions can be organized around a logic that has nothing to do with the decision structure (e.g., garbage can decisions), the problems of limited attention and inconsistency, various ways of defining decision intelligence, and the ways current decisions increase or decrease the likelihood of the decision-maker's future success. The definitions are quite helpful, and the tension in different interpretations of decision-making is well-explained; the reader will come away understanding that in many cases, using one model of decision-making a decision-maker will be a "loser," but using another she will be a "winner."

[Kelly Dodge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading for a class I'm teaching: Critical Analysis and Decision Making.

Quite dense, and I'm don't believe it needs to be. The challenge is rewarding, but I often want to throw it across the room and yell, "Why didn't you say that?"

[Henrik · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is based on the author's lecture series, and it shows. The fact gave it an interesting quality I don't often see in academic books I read, namely that it lacked a sort of central point. There was no grand revelation that was being built up to. I'm not saying that is an automatically bad thing, just that it made the reading process unusual, like I was supposed to be listening to the words, instead of reading them. The basis on lecture series shows a lot in the structure as well, namely that there is a lot of lists involved.

The author also states in the beginning that he doesn't use many examples, instead keeping the talk in more abstract level. I would have loved more examples, as the lack of them made me feel that I was missing something key, like there was one step missing between me and the book's teachings. This may also be explained by the fact that I am not a business student, and therefore the world of decision making in business situations is alien.

I didn't find this books particularly heavy or difficult to read, though I must say there were frequent points where I found myself thinking "hasn't this been said before in this book?".

I read this book for a course in managing archives. I am not quite entirely certain why this book precisely was chosen for me to read. I'm hoping that it provides to be an useful basis for my further studies. At this point, I can't say.

[Eduardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I chased down this book because I believed it would contain more about something I heard discussed, namely three questions decision makers are imagined to ask themselves. The questions are “What kind of situation is this?”, “What kind of person am I?”, and “What does a person like me do in a situation like this?”
It turns out these questions are not an exclusive view of decision making, but one of two views that March describes in detail. His thorough examination of these two views, the logic of consequences and the logic of appropriateness are, to some extent, the foundation of the ensuing exploration of decision making.
I found many other interesting ideas about decision making contained in this book, some of these I had read before and some were new to me. The most interesting of the new-to-me ideas were about the role of ambiguity and the (mostly bad) uses of temporal sorting.
While the book is written mainly from the point of view of decision making in an organization, it is easily applied to other settings.

[Racer_rajesh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok book, nothing great. I dont normally read any books whose Good read rating is below 4. How ever, this book was referred in one of the books i read in recently. The starting of the book is very complicated - mainly about decision making (rules vs appropriateness). If you fail to understand this.. Most of the remaining topic will be difficult to comprehend. The language used in the book is very strong and too technical for a non sociology/psychology students/readers to understand.

[Al · Rating 5 out of 5]

Obra prima sobre o tema, o autor expõe de forma a maioria das vezes simples toda a complexidade que envolve a tomada de decisões. Surpreendente pelas revelações que traz, mostra como a realidade é apenas construção, e que, no final, somos movidos a ilusões.

[Nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps useful if you are in grad school, this primer didn't teach me much that I could apply in my work.

[Anders Ohm · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit outdated

[Lucille Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good summary of work and literature on decision-making.

[Jesse · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gave up for now. DNF.

[Tyson Titensor]

This book had moments of brilliance, but it is unnecessarily dense and slow to read. It reads like a textbook without the textbook formatting that enables skimming. After I thought "I should just re-read Kahneman" for the fourth time I started doing some more aggressive skimming.

If the prose, format, and pacing of this book were edited a bit it would be a winner. As it is I'd only recommend it for folks who are very passionate about the academic aspects of this subject.

[Vern Glaser · Rating 4 out of 5]

great book...

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting if you can get through the scholarly language and/or have a dictionary with you at all times.