Make Better Strategic Decisions

4Behavioural Management

DOI: 10.4324/9781003457398-5

‘Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.’

‘Fortunate is he who understands the cause of things.’— Virgil 70 BC–19 BC.

Now that we have explored the history and personalities at Carillion, it is time to examine behavioural thinking and link this to the case history. You will recall that earlier I introduced Herbert Simon, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1978 for his work on decision-making. Among his many insights was that humans have limited thinking skills, and he described this as Bounded Rationality and used the word bounded, in the sense of a boundary. He suggested that rational choice theory, the idea that we can and do make rational decisions, is an unrealistic description of the ...