Decisions and Organizations

James G. March is Fred H. Merrill Professor of Management and Professor of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford University. He has inspired generations of students with his work in organizational theory. His previous publications include ‘Decisions and Organizations’ (Blackwell Publishing, 1989), ‘Behavioral Theory of the Firm’ (Blackwell Publishing, Second Edition, 1992) and ‘The Pursuit of Organizational Intelligence’ (Blackwell Publishing, 1998). Thierry A. Weill is Professor of Technology Management at Ecole des Mines in Paris. From 2000 to 2002, he acted as scientific advisor to the Prime Minister of France, Lionel Jospin. He is the author of two books, over 40 scientific papers, and several patents. He chairs a monthly workshop on technology and innovation management.

• Introduction: A chronicle of speculations about organizational decision-making 1 Part I The Allocation of Attention1 Organizational structure and pricing behavior in an oligopolistic market 252 Models in a behavioral theory of the firm 373 Financial adversity, internal competition and curriculum change in a university 614 Managerial perspectives on risk and risk-taking 76Part II Conflict in Organizations5 The business firm as a political coalition 1016 The power of power 1167 Implementation and ambiguity 150Part III Adaptive Rules8 Footnotes to organizational change 1679 A model of adaptive organizational search 18710 Learning from experience in organizations 21911 Decision-making and postdecision surprises 228Part IV Decision-Making under Ambiguity12 The technology of foolishness 25313 Bounded rationality, ambiguity and the engineering of choice 26614 A garbage can model of organizational choice 29415 The uncertainty of the past: organizational learning under ambiguity 33516 Performance sampling in social matches 35917 Ambiguity and accounting: the elusive link between information and decision-making 38418 Information in organizations as signal and symbol 40919 Gossip, information and decision-making 429Index 443