What kind of thoughts and theories does bubujingx herbert simon have? What are the contributions?

Simon's first contribution to management science was to put forward the decision-making function of management. Before Simon, Fa Yueer first divided the functions of management in theory. At this time, decision-making was incorporated into the planning function, and later management scholars did not question it. It was not until the 1940s that Simon put forward the argument that decision-making is the primary function of management, and decision-making was valued by management scholars. The vigorous development of today's decision-making theory is inseparable from Simon's pioneering contribution in this field. Simon's second contribution to management is to establish a systematic decision-making theory. The proposition of bounded rational behavior and the criterion of "satisfactory decision" are put forward. Before Simon, microeconomics also conducted in-depth research on individual behavior in the market. Simon believes that the completely rational economic man model has two defects. First, people cannot be completely rational, and it is difficult for people to have a complete understanding and correct prediction of the results that each measure will produce. On the contrary, people often have to make decisions based on subjective judgment to some extent without full understanding. Secondly, it is impossible to list every scheme in the decision-making process. One is that people's ability is limited, and the other is that the cost of the decision-making process is limited. People make decisions not to find the best scheme among all the schemes, but to find a scheme that can meet the requirements among the known schemes.

His main works are: decision-making theory in management behavior, economics and behavioral science, new science of management decision-making, artificial science, human problem solving, etc.

Theoretical contribution

limited rationality

"manager"

Simon believes that people who are managers or decision makers in real life are "managers" of "limited rationality" between complete rationality and irrationality. The value orientation and goals of "managers" are often diversified, which are not only restricted by many factors, but also in a state of change and even contradiction; The knowledge, information, experience and ability of "managers" are limited. He can't and doesn't expect to reach the absolute optimal solution, but is satisfied with finding a satisfactory solution. In actual decision-making, "bounded rationality" means that the decision-maker can't find all the alternatives, can't completely predict the consequences of all the alternatives, and doesn't have a clear and completely consistent preference system, so as to choose the best decision-making scheme in various decision-making environments. Simon's management theory focuses on the boundary between rationality and irrationality of people's social behavior. This is a unique theory about conscious rationality and bounded rationality, and a theory about human behavior turning to seek satisfaction because of lack of the best intelligence.

"bounded rationality"

Simon only put forward his views on "complete rationality" and "irrational bounded rationality" in his book Thinking Model, but his in-depth discussion of "bounded rationality" was gradually improved in his later research on human cognitive system, which is also the inevitable result of further research on "bounded rationality". Simon mentioned in his "Management Behavior" that according to the findings of Miller and others, the capacity of short-term memory is only 72; It takes 5~ 10 seconds for an item to be stored from short-term memory to long-term memory; Memory organization is a hierarchical structure. These are the basic physiological constraints for the brain to handle all tasks. It is this constraint that makes the thinking process appear as a serial processing or searching state, which also limits people's attention span and the speed and stock of knowledge and information acquisition. Accordingly, the limitation of attention span and knowledge range leads to value prejudice and goal cognition, which further limits people's attention span and knowledge information acquisition. Therefore, Simon believes that the rationality theory of decision-making must consider people's basic physiological limitations, cognitive limitations, motivation limitations and their interaction. Therefore, the discussion should be limited rationality, not omniscient and omnipotent rationality; It should be process rationality, not essential rationality; People's choice mechanism should be an adaptive mechanism of limited rationality, not an optimal mechanism of complete rationality. Decision makers do not have all the options and all the information before making a decision, but must search for options and collect information; Decision makers have no measurable utility function, so there is no maximum utility function, only adjustable desire level. This degree of desire is regulated by the theoretical and empirical knowledge of decision makers, the difficulty of scheme search and the personality characteristics of decision makers. So as to determine the selection of the scheme and the end of the search process, and thus obtain a satisfactory solution of the problem. Therefore, the reason why the "manager" accepts a good enough scheme is not because he would rather be inferior to his superiors, but because he has no choice at all and cannot obtain the optimal solution.

"manager"

Professor Simon made a scientific and detailed analysis of the "manager" from the aspects of physiology and psychology. His exposition on information processing is of great significance. His vision is far-sighted and insightful, and he puts forward guiding suggestions on the processing of a large number of contemporary information. With the advent of the information society and the rapid development of communication technologies such as computer network and telephone, the "information crisis" we are facing is not due to the lack of information, but the problem of information surplus, that is, the problem brought by "information explosion". In the information society, lack of control and organization is no longer a resource, but an enemy of information workers. In this "information explosion" living environment, it is very important to realize that "human reason is limited". It will better guide us to concentrate on searching for effective, appropriate and satisfactory information, rather than searching for all relevant information. Only in this way can we think and solve problems effectively, instead of blindly pursuing the optimal solution.

theory of decision-making

As an important school of management, decision theory focuses on rational decision-making, that is, how to choose a "satisfactory" action plan from various possible options. Herbert Simon is the main representative of the decision-making school. This school absorbed the research results of system theory, behavioral science, operational research and computer science, and formed an independent management school in the 1970s.

The theoretical basis of decision-making school is economic theory, especially consumer choice theory, that is, under a certain "rational" premise, through the comparison and choice of various behaviors, the total utility or marginal utility is maximized. Therefore, they are also the main decision-making objects of decision-making theory school.

The school of decision theory attaches great importance to the study of the behavior and quality of decision makers themselves. Simon and March regard "decision-maker" as an independent management model in their book "Information Processing Theory of Human Cognition-Thinking", that is, all members of an organization are decision-makers who reasonably choose means to achieve a certain goal.

Simon pointed out that the important function of managers in an organization is decision-making.

Four main stages: finding out the basis of decision-making, that is, collecting information; Find a possible action plan; Choose among various action plans, that is, choose one plan from various alternatives according to the current situation and the forecast of future development; Evaluate the selected scheme and its implementation. The last step in the decision-making process is also a key step to ensure the feasibility and smooth implementation of the selected scheme. After a comprehensive summary, it is found that in these four stages, company managers and their employees spend a large part of their working time investigating the economic, technological, political and social situations to identify new situations that require new actions.

Classification: decision-making is divided into programmed decision-making and non-programmed decision-making. Procedural decision-making refers to those routine and repetitive routine decisions, and a set of routine procedures can be formulated to handle them. For example, the order price of ordinary customers, the order of office supplies, the salary arrangement of sick workers and so on. The so-called non-procedural decisions refer to those that have never happened in the past, or whose exact nature and structure are still elusive or complicated, or whose role is so important that they need to be handled in the current way. For example, a company decides to establish a profit-making organization in a country where it has never operated, decides to research and develop new products, and so on. However, it is difficult to absolutely distinguish between the two decisions. There is no obvious dividing line between them, but a continuum like a spectrum.

decision-making technique

Decision-making technology is divided into traditional technology and modern technology. Technology is a classic technology, and it is a toolbox used by some managers and organizations from recorded history to this generation. Modern technology is a series of new technologies developed after the Second World War.

Core idea

Simon's decision theory has two core ideas:

Bounded rationality and satisfaction criterion

Simon believes that for a long time, the rationality of human behavior has two extremes. One extreme was initiated by Freud, who tried to attribute all human cognitive activities to the domination of emotions. Simon criticized this. He emphasized that the behavior of the members of the organization is at least rational to a large extent, even if it is not completely rational, and the role of emotions does not dominate everyone. At the other extreme, the economist's "economic man" hypothesis endows human beings with omniscient rationality. From the perspective of economic man, it seems that human beings can have a complete and consistent preference system, so that they can always choose among various alternatives; He always knows exactly what options are available; In order to determine the best scheme, he can perform infinitely complicated operations. Simon also refuted this. He pointed out that it is impossible for an individual's behavior to reach the height of complete rationality, because he has too many alternatives to consider and too much information to evaluate. In fact, it is impossible for anyone in reality to master all the information and have foresight. Decision makers can only predict the results through analysis and research. Therefore, decision makers can only make their own satisfactory choices by comprehensively considering factors such as risks and benefits. So Simon thinks that human behavior is rational, but not completely rational. Bottom line: rationality is limited.

Simon put forward the concept of satisfactory decision-making from bounded rationality. Logically speaking, complete rationality will lead people to seek optimal decision, while limited rationality will lead people to seek satisfactory decision. In the past, people always studied decisions based on optimal decisions. Theoretically and logically, the optimal decision is effective. However, in reality, the optimal decision-making is difficult to achieve, because it is either restricted by the irrational aspects of human behavior, or the information conditions of the optimal choice can not be met, or the decision-making cost is greatly increased in the process of infinitely approaching the optimal. Therefore, Simon proposed to replace the optimal decision with satisfactory decision. Satisfaction means that decision-making only needs to meet two conditions: one is that there is a corresponding minimum satisfaction standard, and the other is that strategic choice can exceed the minimum satisfaction standard. Here, if the decision-making is compared to looking for a needle in a haystack, the optimal decision-making requires finding the sharpest and best needle from all the needles on the seabed, while the satisfactory decision-making only requires finding a needle sharp enough to sew clothes from a limited number of needles. Even if there is a better needle, it is meaningless to decision makers.

theory of decision-making

Compared with the traditional decision theory and other schools, the theory of the decision theory school represented by Simon has the following basic characteristics:

The center of management

It is the center of decision-making management and runs through the whole process of management. Simon thinks you should make a decision before any homework begins. Making a plan is a decision, and organization, leadership and control are also inseparable from decision.

Satisfactory standard

In the decision criteria, the satisfaction criterion is used instead of the optimization criterion. Simon believes that complete rationality is difficult to achieve, and it is impossible to make decisions according to the optimization criteria in management. First of all, the future contains a lot of uncertainty and incomplete information, and it is impossible for people to know everything about the future. Secondly, it is impossible for people to make all plans, which is sometimes neither realistic nor necessary; Third, even the most advanced computer analysis method cannot form a complete and consistent priority order for all possible results.

Influence of decision-making

Simon pointed out that the responsibility of a manager includes not only making decisions by himself, but also ensuring that the organization or a department of the organization he leads can make decisions effectively. He is responsible for a large number of decision-making activities, not only his own activities, but also those of his subordinates.

Theoretical development

In the book Organization, Simon used a lot of space to summarize the application of computers in enterprise management, especially in high-level management and organizational structure.

Simon and others believe that the establishment of enterprise organization and the decentralization and centralization of enterprises cannot exist in isolation from the decision-making process, but must be organically linked with the decision-making process. Simon and others attach great importance to the role of information connection in decision-making. They define information contact as "any process in which the decision premise is passed from one organization member to another". Simon believes that the key task today is not to generate, store or distribute information, but to filter information and process it into effective components. Today's scarce resources are not information, but the ability to process information.

Simon believes that when making plans and countermeasures, enterprises should not only consider the goal of "profit", but also make overall plans, look forward and look back, and strive for the common realization of several contradictory goals. Its decision-making theory is based on "bounded rationality" rather than "profit maximization", and the principle of "meeting requirements" should be adopted. Typical examples of this theory are "market share", "appropriate profit" and "fair price". In the way of decision-making, he advocates group decision-making. The advantage of participating in group decision-making is that group members will not make the same mistakes at the same time. Can avoid decision-making mistakes. Participating in group decision-making can divide the problem into several parts and give it to experts, thus speeding up the solution and improving the solution quality.

The Swedish Academy of Royal Sciences believes that Simon's theory and viewpoint on organizational decision-making have been applied to the planning, design, budgeting and control systems adopted by modern enterprises and public management, and its technology has achieved good results. This theory has successfully explained or predicted many activities, such as the distribution of internal information and decision-making, adjustment under limited competition, the choice of various securities investments and the choice of foreign investment countries. Modern enterprise economics and management studies are mostly based on Simon's thoughts. Therefore, from 65438 to 0978, he won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his "pioneering research on decision-making procedures in economic organizations".