Decisions and Organizations [Paperback]

This book collects together for the first time over 20 of James March's key essays, including those co-authorised with R.M. Cyert and J.P. Olsen and others. The coverage ranges from his early work on the behavioural theory of the firm, through conflict and adaptive rules in organizations, to decision-making under ambiguity (including the famed 'garbage can' model).Introduction: A chronicle of speculations about organizational decision-making 1

Part I The Allocation of Attention

1 Organizational structure and pricing behavior in an oligopolistic market 25

2 Models in a behavioral theory of the firm 37

3 Financial adversity, internal competition and curriculum change in a university 61

4 Managerial perspectives on risk and risk-taking 76

Part II Conflict in Organizations

5 The business firm as a political coalition 101

6 The power of power 116

7 Implementation and ambiguity 150

Part III Adaptive Rules

8 Footnotes to organizational change 167

9 A model of adaptive organizational search 187

10 Learning from experience in organizations 219

11 Decision-making and postdecision surprises 228

Part IV Decision-Making under Ambiguity

12 The technology of foolishness 253

13 Bounded rationality, ambiguity and the engineering of choice 266

14 A garbage can model of organizational choice 294

15 The uncertainty of the past: organizational learning under ambiguity 335

16 Performance sampling in social matches 359

17 Ambiguity and accounting: the elusive link between information and decision-making 384

18 Information in organizations as signal and symbol 409

19 Gosl“0