Decision Making for Business
A Reader

First Edition

Edited by:

Graeme Salaman - The Open University

Other Titles in:
Decision Analysis

September 2001 | 278 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd

In this book, Graeme Salaman gathers the best contributions to our understanding of decision-making and assembles them to form a coherent and sustained analysis of the key factors that influence decision making. The selected articles are stimulating, provocative and analytical, resulting in a critical and comprehensive analysis of decision making.

Decision-making for Business presents essential readings concerned with the importance of decisions, the processes of decision-making, and the implications of `flawed' decision-making. The book reveals ways in which patterns of decision-making can be described and explained, and how these patterns require the use of a range of theories, which are included in the selection. This work is designed as a resource for anyone seeking an understanding of the changing nature of organizations and the world of business.

SECTION ONE: THE ANATOMY OF DECISION-MAKING

Irving L Janis

A Perfect Failure

The Bay of Pigs

Erhard K Valentin

Anatomy of a Fatal Business Strategy

Richard M Cyert and James G March

A Summary of Basic Concepts in the Behavioural Theory of the Firm

Susan Miller, David Hickson and David Wilson

Decision-Making in Organizations

SECTION TWO: UNDERSTANDING DECISION MAKING: UNDERSTANDING ORGANIZATIONS

Andrew M Pettigrew

Decision-Making as a Political Process

Nils Brunsson

The Irrationality of Action and Action Rationality

Ideologies and Organizational Actions

A Strauss, L Scatzman, D Ehrlich, R Bucher and M Sabsin

The Hospital and Its Negotiated Order

Don Zimmerman

The Practicalities of Rule Use

SECTION THREE: THINKING IN ORGANIZATIONS

Linda Smircich and Charles Stubbart

Strategic Management in an Enacted World

Theresa K Lant, Frances J Milliken and Bipin Batra

The Role of Managerial Learning and Interpretation in Strategic Persistence and Re-Orientation

An Empirical Exploration

Charles R Schwenk

The Cognitive Perspective on Strategic Decision-Making

Paul Bate

The Impact of Organizational Culture on Approaches to Organizational Problem-Solving

SECTION FOUR: THE SOCIETAL CONTEXT OF ORGANIZATIONAL DECISION-MAKING

Nils Brunsson and Johan P Olsen

Organizational Forms

Can We Choose Them?

Paul Du Gay and Graeme Salaman

The Cult(ure) of the Customer

Janet Newman

Managerialism and Social Welfare

Herv[ac]e Laroche

From Decision to Action in Organizations

Decision-Making as a Social Representation

excellent resource for qualitative aspects of decision making; would benefit by a more creative layout (i.e. colour, boxed examples/cases); would also be beneficial to include in future edition a concluding chapter which summarises the overarching themes of this reader

Mr Georgios Zifkos

Business Management, York St John University

May 20, 2015

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