Cary Neeper's Blog: Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction - Posts Tagged "lectures"

A Primer On Decision Making: How Decisions Happen, by James G. March, New York, The Free Press, 1994, from his lectures at Stanford University.

This is a treasure trove of timeless one-liners—for anyone who is involved in making decisions, which is most of us. Jim March challenges us with a plethora of ifs, ands, buts, and might-have-beens, if we would only step back from our assumptions and take a good look at what we might be missing.

Based on lectures given while a professor of political science and sociology at Stanford University, the book is divided into six sections—the limits to rationality, problems with decisions based on rules, and on “multiple actors” working in teams and in politics, problems with “ambiguity and interpretation” and problems with “using knowledge.”

March begins by noting the role of ignorance in decision making and ends the book with the role of knowledge and power. He keeps our feet to the fire by listing all the ways we manage to avoid difficult decisions, even when making contracts. Among our limitations, he pays attention to cognitive dissonance (without naming it), environmental limits, bio-constraints, and the future.

Read this book with a pencil and notepad in hand, so that you can write down all the examples that come to mind when reading his summary observations. The world will be made a better place when you act on those notes.