Judgment In Managerial Decision Making

by Max H. Bazerman

Is your judgment influenced by personal biases?

In situations requiring careful judgment, we're all influenced by our own biases to some extent. But, with Max Bazerman's Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, Sixth Edition, you can learn how to overcome those biases to make better managerial decisions.

The text examines judgment in a variety of organizational contexts, and provides practical strategies for changing your decision-making processes and improving these processes so that they become part of your permanent behavior. Throughout, you'll findnumerous hands-on decision exercises and examples from the author's extensive executive training experience that will help you enhance the quality of your managerial judgment.

Past editions have been used in top universities, in business schools, and in public policy, psychology, and economics classes. In addition, the text has been widely recognized by practitioners in the world of behavioral finance.

Revised with two new chapters

This Sixth Edition now adds chapters on bounded ethicality (Chapter 8) and bounded awareness (Chapter 11). Both of these chapters are based on Bazerman's recent writing with Dolly Chugh and Mahzarin Banaji.

Max H. Bazerman is the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. In addition, Max is also formally affiliated with the Kennedy School of Government, the Psychology Department, and the Program on Negotiation at Harvard. He is the author or co-author of over 150 research articles and chapters, and the author of numerous other books. Max was named one of the top 30 authors, speakers, and teachers of management by Executive Excellence in each of their two most recent rankings.

Genres: Business, Psychology, Management, Nonfiction, Leadership, Textbooks, Economics

241 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Max H. Bazerman is the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and the Co-Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. Max's research focuses on decision making, negotiation, and ethics. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of twenty books and over 200 research articles and chapters. His latest book, The Power of Noticing: What the Best Leader See, is now available from Simon and Schuster.

Reviews

[Mehrdad Zaa · Rating 5 out of 5]

یکی از بهترین کتابهایی که خوانده ام و شاید بهترین کتاب در حوزه ی تصمیمگیری و خطاهای شناختی. این کتاب توسط ماکس بیزرمن استاد دانشگاه هاروارد و همکارش دون.ای.مور نوشته شده است و از نظر محتوا بسیار غنی، نظام مند و متکی به پژوهش های معتبر علمی است. کتاب نه تنها برای مدیران که برای هر فردی که قصد دارد اشتباه ها و خطاهای رایج ذهنی را بهتر بشناسد و کیفیت تصمیمها و تحلیلهای خود در عرصه های مختلف زندگی را بهبود دهد، کاربردی و مفید است.
در بخشهای مختلف کتاب خطاهای رایج و اغلب ناخودآگاه ذهن انسان در هنگام تحلیل و تصمیمگیری بررسی شده و مواردی نظیر سوگیری تایید، اعتماد به نفس بیش از حد، خطای لنگر، خطای نمایندگی، تاثیر عواطف بر تصمیمها، تاثیر نحوه ی بیان مسئله بر انتخاب افراد، خطاهای رایج در سرمایه گذاری و مذاکره مورد بررسی قرار گرفته است و در نهایت در فصل پایانی راهکارها و تمرینهایی برای تربیت ذهن و اجتناب از این خطاهای ناخودآگاه ارائه شده است.

[Gabriel Pinkus]

The most practical guide to managerial decisions that I've ever read. Charlie Munger highly approves of this book for good reasons. Best discussion on business ethics I have ever read - light-years ahead of most of what I've encountered.

[Steven P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I assume this is the latest edition of the book that I read for a class in the early '90s, which I recall as a slim paperback volume. It covered cognitive biases clearly, with simple, compelling examples. Important stuff that I hadn't been exposed to previously.

[Monique · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay so another Graduate required reading book down and this one dealing with Management and how and why we make decisions. The preface of this book pretty much sums up what you are about to read as they mention the complexities and heuristics involved in pretty much any decision. One of the most intriguing chapters had to do with Biases and what causes people to make decisions such as the Availability heuristic which makes people more likely to make a decision based on the frequency, probability or likely event that the opportunity is limited in time; the Confirmation Bias which deals with people searching for evidence to support a conclusion or deduction made before hand—as mentioned people will always find facts to support what they want to believe; the Anchoring Bias which is used often in Used Car sales that operates on the initial starting point as a factor to sway a decision..there are some good examples here of a car priced at an unreasonable price that remains stuck in a customer’s head influencing them subconsciously to think any price lower than that is actually a bargain when in fact the original car price is much lower..; With lots of examples, scenarios and applications where you apply your own personal judgment, determine fairness and what you are willing to negotiate and compromise for this book stretches your mind and makes you question your own judgments
—as this book also points out you should always go for the win—win where you receive something instead of nothing, being hasty or quick to judge a situation can lead to an irrational decision and this book illustrates how to overcome them to manage people and financial situations within an organization..the kind of book to keep for reference and practice and for guidance on terms like bonded awareness, judgmental heuristics and back knowledge on the importance of fairness in judgement. Technical and verbose but also thought provoking and educational for sure as you don’t even realize the value you place on decisions and how they affect every aspect of a business from hiring to daily routine, innovation and strategic planning..ei yi yi Management is so multi-faceted and really requires internal reflection and self knowledge on how to make decisions that everyone can benefit from especially if your organization is a library 😊

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm biased about bias research so it's not surprising I didn't like the book. This outlook on the province of decision-making the authors and their school of though does not contribute to the real life challenges.

All those artificial problems that researchers make the students solve don't not shed light on the real decision-making which goes on (and must I say quite contrary to this bias-lensed worldview goes on quite successfully) in the world.

If you want to understand which biases are out there this is a good read, with lots of references to the studies in that area. But I'm quite sceptical this book will help you learn to make better decision in real life situation as opposed to a few-paragraph lab cases.

[John Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the book for a master's program. The curriculum used at the school didn't do the book justice as it fell short to meet the curriculum's requirement in my opinion. Only a few chapters out of the book were used. There is a lot of good information about management decision making but be aware it goes deep into the scientific side of decision making. The use of gaming theory, biases, blinding and framing. For the class I got very little out of it. For a general management or skim over decision making type class, this book was too detailed. But for someone wanting a deep understanding of why we do what we do then probably a good read for you.

[Lawrence Colby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent chapter on behavioral finance and investments. Referral from Charlie Munger.

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

As far as graduate text books go, this one was pretty good. It was extremely dense, but the content was interesting and kept me going. I would recommend this book for anyone, not just MBA students and not just business people, but everyone because we all make important decisions in life. Very useful to learn about our common biases and blind spots.

[Jessica Dudok · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting information about the psychology behind decision making. I read this for a class and it was helpful to read information on how our brains work when making decisions and how to become better decision makers.

[Erna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clear and insightful.

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly, I was forced to read this one during a course at Uni. But I have to admit I enjoyed every single page. The combination of theatrical frameworks underlined with practical test completely makes you change the way you make decisions and also makes your more aware of how you make Them. Additionally it broadens your view on how others make decisions and why they may act a certain way. If you want to read something educating and self improving at the same time, it’s a must

[Shannen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for a Judgement and Decision Making course. This one was a long one in comparision to two other books on this topic (including Blind Spots by the same author). This one was a lot more detailed. However, since I've also read Blind Spots, I already knew a lot of the studies and example problems discussed here. Bazerman reused parts of what is discussed in this book in the newer Blind Spots, which is a bit annoying to be honest. Overall it was interesting, but I liked his newer book more since the writing is a bit more digestable.

[Ben Lever · Rating 4 out of 5]

As textbooks go, this one's pretty good. Well written, and with lots of rigorous research backing everything up (which is often lacking in business textbooks).

If you're really keen on this stuff I'd still probably recommend Thinking Fast and Slow, but if you are a lecturer looking to set a text you can't go wrong with this.

[John Tyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to think** of a book that more succinctly and directly gets its points across. I will keep this on my shelf to consult for many years to come. The book’s discussion of biases, bounded awareness, influences on decision-making, negotiations, among many other topics, is unmatched.

**availability heuristic / recency bias, anyone? :)

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to read this book for school and I really liked it. it is quite interesting and the topics are mind blowing.. i was surprised at how all the biases apply to me. I felt like a lab rat. Do we all (humans) really behave the same way??

[Chris]

http://www.goodreads.com/images/layou...

[Henrique Neffa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good book required in my Harvard's class on decision-making. However, the book only present you the errors of human. Thus, It requires a lot of effort to really improve your decision-making.

[Denis Vasilev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Хорошая академичная книга про принятие решений и переговоры. В основном обсуждение разных biases.

[Sergey Dudko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great and very detailed books on the biases that affect managerial decisions.
Most of the book is about conscious and unconscious biases that affect the managerial decisions.
The main idea is based on human nature’s inability to get rid of biases without a deliberate practice in decision making process.
The best we can do to marginally improve the decision-making is:
• Get more experience in a specific domain and expertise in decision making process\
• Debias judgement as much as possible
• Learn through analogies
• Take an outsider’s view
• Use linear models and other statistical / mathematical tools
• Understand biases in others
• Incorporate intuition as one of the decision factors

[Abhishek Chauhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are numerous good books on human biases. However knowing about biases is not enough. You need to be able to get rid of them in your actual behavior, which is much more difficult compared to knowing.

Where this book excels is that it explains the biases lucidly in context of investing and management decision making and secondly it gives strategies to actually tackle those biases while making those decisions.

[Turgut · Rating 5 out of 5]

Define the problem, identify the criteria, weight the criteria, generate alternatives, rate each alternative on each criterion, compute the optimal decision.

Work on the right problem, specify your objectives, create imaginative alternatives, understand the consequences, grapple with your tradeoffs, clarify your uncertainties, think hard about your risk tolerance, consider linked decisions.

[BL · Rating 4 out of 5]

This required reading in my Engineering Management class, and I will keep this book on my desk. It should be required reading for anyone in leadership.

This book goes into great detail about biases and how they influence decision-making all the time in everything you do. There are great examples of how to overcome the biases, how to identify them, etc.

I will be keeping this book.

[Fayes · Rating 4 out of 5]

excellent and must to read book for decision-makers

[Sy. C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent follow up to Poor Charlie's Almanack.

[Ashwaq · Rating 2 out of 5]

كله العاب ومسائل

[Harry Harman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frameworks for cogent thinking.

Gets rid of any lingering biases that don’t serve us.

[Veera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basic book of my MBA studies. Nice introduction.

[Palash Kulshrestha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book with sprinkles of stuff

[Sivya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this book for my Decision Tools for Managers course for my MPA. There’s lots of useful and helpful information in this textbook.

[rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

or how to behavioral economics yourself