Works
- Administrative Behavior, 1947
- A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1955
- Report on a General Problem-Solving Program, Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Processing (with Allen Newell and J. C. Shaw), 1959
- Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World, chapter in Computers, Communications, and the Public Interest, edited by Martin Greenberger, 1971
- Perception in Chess, Cognitive Psychology (with William G. Chase), 1973
In Tactics of Organizational Politics
Ideas
Bounded rationality. Real decision-makers have limited information, time, and computing capacity, so they search among alternatives until they find one that meets an aspiration level, a procedure Simon called satisficing.
Decision premises. Simon analyzed organizations as systems of decisions in which individual choices are shaped by premises the organization supplies, such as goals, information, and procedures. Whoever controls those premises influences the decisions made from them.
The scarcity of attention. What information consumes is the attention of its recipients, so "a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." In an information-rich world the scarce resource is attention, and most of the cost of information falls on the recipient.
What it explains
Simon explains why decision-makers rely on what is put in front of them and in what form: they cannot examine everything, so they accept the first acceptable option and the premises supplied to them. Volume, timing, and framing of information therefore shape decisions as much as its content.
Tactics that draw on Herbert A. Simon (73)
- Accelerated Clock
- Activity Trap
- Advocate's Executive Summary
- Agenda Control
- Artificial Complexity Defense
- Audit Hostage
- Backlog Control
- Board Prep Diversion
- Budget Cycle Timing
- Budgetary Camouflage
- Celebrity Hire
- Chairing the Task Force
- Chief of Staff Wall
- Competency Model Coup
- Complexity as Camouflage
- Complexity Injection
- Death by a Thousand Meetings
- Decoy Initiative
- Decoy Option
- Depreciation Politics
- Designing the Template
- Drafting the Charter
- Drowning in Opportunity
- Exclusive Insight Briefing
- Executive Overload
- Fire Drill Fatigue
- First Plan on the Table
- Full and Literal Production
- Idea Fairy
- Inbox Flood and Drought
- Induced Error Setup
- Information Asymmetry
- Initiative Flooding
- Innovation Launch Alongside Cuts
- Integration Stall
- Job Description Rewrites
- Knowledge Fragmentation
- Leadership Churn Window
- Lexicon Control
- Magnifying Minor Flaws
- Methodology Capture
- Metric Redefinition
- Minutes Control
- Mushroom Management
- No Alternative Frame
- No-Agenda Meeting
- One-Sided Error Ledger
- Owning the Numbers Pipeline
- Perfect Storm Timing
- Perfectionism Dismissal
- Pipeline Poisoning
- Planned Concession
- Poisoned Briefing
- Procedural Capture
- Process over Outcome
- Promise Fatigue
- Reverse Delegation
- Role Redefinition Ouster
- Shock and Awe Rollout
- Short-Term Focus Trap
- Silence-Means-Yes Deadline
- Skip-Level Gambit
- Small Decisions First
- Subjective Rating Criteria
- Succession Pool Dilution
- Supplying the Decision Premises
- Tailored Role Requirements
- Teaching the Board the Market
- Underinvestment Before Restructuring
- Volunteering for the Analysis
- Workload as Control
- Writing for Scarce Attention
- Writing the Data Dictionary
In Thinking Tools
Known for
A Nobel laureate in economics and Turing Award winner known for bounded rationality and satisficing; with Newell and Shaw he built the General Problem Solver around means-ends analysis, and with William Chase he explained chess expertise as the recognition of thousands of familiar chunks.