Abstract
Why do we read and, perhaps, write books? On one hand, they can cover more ground; on the other, they can achieve a richer level of detail than academic articles allow (Lindebaum, Pérezts, & Andersson, 2017). This book’s contribution leans towards the former, since it provides a broad, accessible overview of its subject, but without going into any great depth on any of the many topics that it covers. As a corollary to its wide coverage, it also offers an ample selection of examples across many aspects of decision-making. Among the multidisciplinary readership of Organization Studies, this book might be most appealing to scholars with little familiarity with the decision-making field. For them, the rich variety of examples, covering individual and organizational issues, will open a window into the complexities of decision-making.
The book is divided into five chapters, plus a case study of the Swedish government’s response to the 2004 South-East Asian tsunami that is split across two sections at the beginning and end. This story clearly illustrates that organizations and their members often fail to act on time due to indecision in face of high complexity and uncertainty – with grave consequences. Having the story as the opening and the closing of the book creates a tension that serves as a frame that encloses five chapters.
The first proper chapter provides a general introduction to decision-making and the purpose of the book: Readers are probably convinced that decision is an important and frequently used concept, but how important? When and where are decisions made? Who makes decisions and why? And – not least – how do they go about it? On the following pages, we answer these questions by making them more complicated than their mere definition permits. We hope that this endeavour will clarify some of the intriguing issues facing decision makers. (p. 4)
While chapter 2 turns to individuals as decision-makers and touches upon several themes, including issues of agency and free will, and varied examples that show the limitations and possibilities of our rationality (Cabantous, Gond, & Johnson-Cramer, 2010), timing (Alby & Zucchermaglio, 2006; Drummond, 1994), biases created by framing, and the impact of faith (Weick, 2006), chapter 3 sets out to study ‘organizations as decision makers’. It opens the discussion with the provocative assertion that individual and organizational decision-making are essentially the same, and that the study of individuals in the laboratory rarely – if ever – applies in practice (pp. 41–42). However, despite laboratory studies’ limitations, multiple studies and references (I cite only a handful here) empirically show the opposite of what is argued in the chapter: that students are a heterogeneous but appropriate subject pool for the study of social behaviour (Druckman & Kam, 2009; Exadaktylos, Espín, & Branas-Garza, 2013; Peterson, 2001), that experimental decisions do not need to be unique, can be repeated, and multiple actors can interact (Cohen & Bacdayan, 1994; Meyer & Shi, 1995; Sanfey, Rilling, Aronson, Nystrom, & Cohen, 2003), and that information presented in experiments involves uncertainty (Laureiro-Martínez et al., 2015; Laureiro-Martínez et al., 2014; Billinger et al., 2013), and is often ambiguous (Huber, Sloof, & Van Praag, 2017; Levine, Bernard, & Nagel, 2017). After an introduction to the different aspects that characterize organizational decision-making – which appears at odds with the assertion that individual and organizational decision-making are the same – the core of chapter 3 presents three examples that clearly and succinctly illustrate how some situations can evolve in ways that undermine the feasibility of rational decision-making.
Chapter 4 briefly explores the multiple consequences of decisions, using a variety of examples to show how not all decisions trigger or facilitate action, and how decisions can confer control, legitimacy or responsibility over others – or fail to do so. Finally, chapter 5 summarizes in six pages the ‘complexities’ of decision-making, spanning topics at the individual and organizational levels with a discussion of the intricacies that arise when different groups collaborate to achieve desired outcomes. Two natural complements to this chapter are two special issues, both published in 2006 in this journal, one on naturalistic decision-making (Lipshitz, Klein, & Carroll, 2006) and one on the complexities of sensemaking (Sutcliffe, Brown, & Putnam, 2006).
The book is a difficult read in some ways, an easy one in others. For the reader, the difficulty lies in being taken from one topic to the next without a clear route being laid out. There are no introductions or summaries to outline what each chapter is going to say, and the conclusions to delineate the transitions between topics are limited.
On the other hand, the many brief examples make for easy reading by constantly, if briefly, illustrating the various points. These examples are drawn from the near and distant past and look at both individuals and organizations. At one point, we move from an illustration taken from Shakespeare to another based on Darwin’s decision-making and then on to the dynamics inside organizations in just two pages (pp. 68–69). It is also refreshing to see Scandinavian examples, as in the opening and closing case study, and the evolution in how the Swedish royal family communicates on matters pertaining to their private lives and, particularly, their relationships (p. 17). This narrative variety makes for a lively reading experience that reflects the dynamism of the topic itself.
The informal, non-pompous style also helps the general reader, although it might not satisfy the specialist seeking greater precision. For instance, the section on intuition and emotion (pp. 34–36) reviews some of the literature on cognitive biases without citing the broad field of behavioural economics, which overlaps so extensively with decision-making. The clear and simple style is ideal for the practitioner, but might leave an academic reader hungry for definitional clarity – for example, what exactly is the difference between biases, intuitions and experience? More definitions for key concepts – such as those given on page 3 for ‘decisions’ and on page 12 for ‘rationality’ – would save the reader from resorting to their own, potentially inappropriate definitions for concepts such as ‘intuitions’.
Given the breadth of topics covered, it is surprising to find no references to two topics that are central to the study of decision-making today: neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Studies in neurosciences (methods and findings), economics (neuroeconomics), marketing, finance and (more recently) strategy all provide a strong basis for understanding the individual-level antecedents of decisions. Meanwhile, advances in artificial intelligence, allied with computing power and large-scale data processing, provide individuals and organizations with tools that can compensate, at least in part, for their own ‘bounded rationality’.
An interesting contribution is the attempt to structure a variety of topics within judgement and decision-making using four decision-making logics. These are consequences (decision-makers try to assess the outcomes of courses of action), appropriateness (decision-makers consider relevant rules), imitation (decision-makers follow others’ precedents, or their own) and experimentation (decision-makers only evaluate the results of their decisions in retrospect).
While the authors provide examples for each of the logics, both at the individual (chapter 2) and organizational levels (chapter 3), there is no discussion about the origins of these logics. There are many questions that it would be interesting to explore in more depth. For example, different situations are presented under one of the four logics, but how much does making a decision under one logic preclude the use of another? Can individuals – or, more pertinently, organizations – blend two or more logics when evaluating a situation and making a decision? Or do these logics correspond to some combination of psychological traits that some individuals are more likely to rely on when making particular decisions?
The authors propose that decisions do not necessarily lead to action, which is well accepted (Cyert & March, 1963). More contentiously, they also argue the converse: that many actions are undertaken without any decisions being made. Sadly, this thought-provoking argument is underdeveloped. We know very well that many ‘decisions’ are beyond our awareness, and the ‘somatic marker hypothesis’ has suggested how past experience might influence decisions in ways of which we are unaware (Bechara & Damasio, 2005; Bechara, Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio, 2005). In this view, somatic markers (e.g. physiological changes in heart rate, muscle tone, or skin conductance) and the emotions they evoke are consciously or unconsciously associated with past outcomes that the decision-maker has obtained. Given this association, somatic markers influence decision-making in favour of some behaviours over others. While the computational mechanisms that precede action may be very rapid, and perhaps beyond awareness, we cannot conclude that no decision has taken place (Poppa & Bechara, 2018).
Overall, this book will offer value for scholars with a general interest in management, particularly those approaching it from more technical fields. It might also provide a useful way into the field for bachelor students, or specialist practitioners taking on their first managerial roles, who might be surprised by the emphasis on non-rational decision-making. They will also find the many topics and examples illuminating, and a good starting point for wider and more detailed reading on this deep and fascinating subject.