Simon's Theory of Decision Making | For Under Graduates | Herbert Simon | Easy Language

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Decision-making is usually defined as a process or sequence of activities involving stages of problem recognition, search for information, definition of alternatives and the selection of an actor of one from two or more alternatives consistent with the ranked preferences”.

Herbert Simon is also a great contributor of administrative theory and is regarded as the first Behaviourist.

The human relations were considered as the first Behaviourists but it was not fully developed and it was not recognised as such.

According to Simon administration/management requires an enquiry into how decisions are made and tasks performed and was the essential process of organisational action.

In his book ‘Administrative Behaviour’ he argued that ‘ making a decision is really making a choice between alternative courses of action or even between action and non-action’.

His theory has directed the scholars to study the importance of decisions and how they are made.

He states that there can never be a ‘one best course of action or decision’ as stated by Classical Theorists as in reality an administrator can never have all the complete information and knowledge to do so and there will always be a better course of action which he is not aware of.

And so he takes a decisions based on principles of bounded rationality or limitations of human capacity in solving complex problems.

Such limitations arise from internal or psychological facts of stress or motivations on one hand or external,environmental factors on the other hand.

And thus, the decision taken by an administrative man is ‘satisficing’ that is satisfying and sufficing rather than maximising for the situation and ‘best choice’ as per his knowledge.

According to Simon, there are three important steps in the decision-making process:

The Intelligence Activity: It means finding occasions calling for a decision.

The Design Activity: It means inventory, developing and analyzing possible courses of action.

The Choice Activity: It refers to selecting a particular course of action from those available.