Abstract
Recently I gave a lecture on elementary decision theory, an introduction to rational theories of choice. After the lecture, a student asked whether it was conceivable that the practical procedures for decision making implicit in theories of choice might make actual human decisions worse rather than better. What is the empirical evidence, he asked, that human choice is improved by knowledge of decision theory or by application of the various engineering forms of rational choice? I answered, I think correctly, that the case for the usefulness of decision engineering rested primarily not on the kind of direct empirical confirmation that he sought, but on two other things: on a set of theorems proving the superiority of particular procedures in particular situations if the situations are correctly specified and the procedures correctly applied, and on the willingness of clients to purchase the services of experts with skills in decision sciences.
Keywords
AmbiguityRationalitySet (abstract data type)Bounded rationalityDecision theoryManagement scienceEmpirical evidenceComputer sciencePsychologyEpistemologyMathematicsArtificial intelligenceEconomics
Related Publications
The Relative Operating Characteristic in Psychology
The clinician looking, listening, or feeling for signs of a disease may far prefer a false alarm to a miss, particularly if the disease is serious and contagious. On the other h...
The theory of signal detectability
The problem of signal detectability treated in this paper is the following: Suppose an observer is given a voltage varying with time during a prescribed observation interval and...
Can the dark energy equation-of-state parameter<i>w</i>be less than<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mi>−</mml:mi><mml:mn>1</mml:mn><mml:mi>?</mml:mi></mml:math>
Models of dark energy are conveniently characterized by the equation-of-state\nparameter w=p/\\rho, where \\rho is the energy density and p is the pressure.\nImposing the Domina...
Grounded theory, ethnography and phenomenology
Purpose The paper aims to look at some of the problems commonly associated with qualitative methodologies, suggesting that there is a need for a more rigorous application in ord...
The Discovery of Grounded Theory; Strategies for Qualitative Research
Most writing on sociological method has been concerned with how accurate facts can be obtained and how theory can thereby be more rigorously tested. In The Discovery of Grounded...
Publication Info
- Year
- 1988
- Type
- book-chapter
- Pages
- 33-57
- Citations
- 1706
- Access
- Closed
External Links
Social Impact
Altmetric
PlumX Metrics
Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions
Citation Metrics
1706
OpenAlex
Cite This
James G. March
(1988).
BOUNDED RATIONALITY, AMBIGUITY, AND THE ENGINEERING OF CHOICE.
Cambridge University Press eBooks
, 33-57.
https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511598951.004
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.1017/cbo9780511598951.004