Framing Decisions: Decision-Making that Accounts for Irrationality, People and Constraints

Book description

The economic crisis of 2008–2009 was a transformational event: it demonstrated that smart people aren't as smart as they and the public think. The crisis arose because a lot of highly educated people in high-impact positions— political power brokers, business leaders, and large segments of the general public—made a lot of bad decisions despite unprecedented access to data, highly sophisticated decision support systems, methodological advances in the decision sciences, and guidance from highly experienced experts. How could we get things so wrong? The answer, says J. Davidson Frame in Framing Decisions: Decision Making That Accounts for Irrationality, People, and Constraints, is that traditional processes do not account for the three critical immeasurable elements highlighted in the book's subtitle— irrationality, people, and constraints.

Frame argues that decision-makers need to move beyond their single-minded focus on rational and optimal solutions as preached by the traditional paradigm. They must accommodate a decision's social space and address the realities of dissimulation, incompetence, legacy, greed, peer pressure, and conflict. In the final analysis, when making decisions of consequence, they should focus on people – both as individuals and in groups.

Framing Decisions offers a new approach to decision making that gets decision-makers to put people and social context at the heart of the decision process. It offers guidance on how to make decisions in a real world filled with real people seeking real solutions to their problems.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title page
  3. Copyright page
  4. The Jossey-Bass Business & Management Series
  5. Dedication
  6. List of Figures
  7. Preface
    1. ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK
    2. CONCLUSION
  8. 1 An Evolving Decision-Making Paradigm
    1. THE TRADITIONAL PARADIGM
    2. THE REAL WORLD
    3. RETHINKING DECISION MAKING
    4. THE COGNITIVE CHALLENGE
    5. ADJUSTING TO THE NEW PARADIGM
    6. CONCLUSION: IT ISN’T EASY GETTING IT RIGHT
  9. 2 Decisions and Decision Making
    1. DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES ON DECISION MAKING
    2. RATIONAL, IRRATIONAL, NONRATIONAL DECISIONS
    3. DEALING WITH UNKNOWNS
  10. 3 The Social Context of Decision Making
    1. THE SOCIAL CONTEXT
    2. THE SOCIAL SPACE OF DECISION MAKING
    3. ALLISON’S MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES ON DECISION MAKING
    4. THE LINK BETWEEN STAKEHOLDER AND DECISION-MAKER
    5. THE IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGE
    6. ACCOMMODATING EXTERNAL FORCES
    7. CONCLUSION
  11. 4 The Organizational Dimension
    1. ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
    2. ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESS
    3. PEOPLE IN ORGANIZATIONS
    4. ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
    5. CONCLUSION
  12. 5 The Moral Dimension
    1. BROAD CATEGORIES OF MORAL FAILINGS
    2. MORAL HAZARD
    3. PRINCIPAL-AGENT DILEMMA
    4. MORALITY, ETHICS, AND LEGALITY: THEY ARE DIFFERENT
    5. LAST WORD
  13. 6 People as Decision-Makers
    1. FACTORS THAT AFFECT HOW INDIVIDUALS MAKE DECISIONS
    2. A UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE ON PERSONALITY AND DECISION MAKING: ELLIOTT JAQUES, HUMAN CAPABILITY, AND TIME SPAN OF DISCRETION
    3. CONCLUSION
  14. 7 The Wisdom—and Foolishness—of Crowds
    1. INDIVIDUAL VERSUS GROUP DECISION-PARTICIPATION SPECTRUM
    2. MAKING DECISIONS IN GROUPS
    3. DEGREES OF CONSENSUS
    4. DEFINING CONSENSUS
    5. REACHING A DECISION
    6. THE WISDOM AND FOOLISHNESS OF CROWDS
    7. HONEYBEE DECISION MAKING
  15. 8 The Biology of Decision Making
    1. BRAIN BASICS
    2. THE LAZY BRAIN
    3. VISUAL ILLUSIONS: WHAT YOU SEE ISN’T WHAT YOU GET
    4. EXAMPLES OF VISUAL ILLUSIONS
    5. BRAIN DECEPTION BEYOND VISUAL ILLUSIONS
    6. THE MATURING BRAIN
    7. CONCLUSION
  16. 9 Toward an Empirically Rooted Understanding of Decision Making
    1. IN THE BEGINNING: TOWARD AN EMPIRICAL VIEW
    2. EVIDENCE OF UNCONSCIOUS DELIBERATION IN DECISION MAKING: THREE EMPIRICAL APPROACHES
    3. THE CONTRIBUTION OF EMPIRICAL RESEARCH: WHERE DO WE STAND?
    4. EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ON DECISION MAKING IN THE NEUROSCIENCES
    5. THE CONTRIBUTION OF NEUROPSYCHOLOGY RESEARCH: WHERE DO WE STAND?
    6. THE NEED FOR RESEARCH ON DECISIONS OF CONSEQUENCE
  17. 10 Seven Lessons
    1. SEVEN LESSONS FOR HIGHLY EFFECTIVE DECISION-MAKERS
    2. LAST WORD
  18. References
  19. Acknowledgments
  20. The Author
  21. Index

Product information

  • Title: Framing Decisions: Decision-Making that Accounts for Irrationality, People and Constraints
  • Author(s): J. Davidson Frame
  • Release date: November 2012
  • Publisher(s): Jossey-Bass
  • ISBN: 9781118014899