Decision-Making Support Systems: Achievements and Challenges for the New Decade

Decision-Making Support Systems: Achievements and Challenges for the New Decade
Author: Mora, Manuel
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 435
Release: 2002-07-01
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1591400805

Annotation The book presents state-of-the-art knowledge about decision-making support systems (DMSS). Its main goals are to provide a compendium of quality chapters on decision-making support systems that help diffuse scarce knowledge about effective methods and strategies for successfully designing, developing, implementing, and evaluating decision-making support systems, and to create an awareness among readers about the relevance of decision-making support systems in the current complex and dynamic management environment.

Models of My Life

Models of My Life
Author: Herbert A. Simon
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 463
Release: 1996-10-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 026269185X

In this candid and witty autobiography, Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon looks at his distinguished and varied career, continually asking himself whether (and how) what he learned as a scientist helps to explain other aspects of his life. A brilliant polymath in an age of increasing specialization, Simon is one of those rare scholars whose work defines fields of inquiry. Crossing disciplinary lines in half a dozen fields, Simon's story encompasses an explosion in the information sciences, the transformation of psychology by the information-processing paradigm, and the use of computer simulation for modeling the behavior of highly complex systems. Simon's theory of bounded rationality led to a Nobel Prize in economics, and his work on building machines that think—based on the notion that human intelligence is the rule-governed manipulation of symbols—laid conceptual foundations for the new cognitive science. Subsequently, contrasting metaphors of the maze (Simon's view) and of the mind (neural nets) have dominated the artificial intelligence debate. There is also a warm account of his successful marriage and of an unconsummated love affair, letters to his children, columns, a short story, and political and personal intrigue in academe.

Decision Economics: In the Tradition of Herbert A. Simon's Heritage

Decision Economics: In the Tradition of Herbert A. Simon's Heritage
Author: Edgardo Bucciarelli
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2017-06-13
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319608827

The special session on Decision Economics (DECON) is a scientific forum held annually and intended to share ideas, projects, research results, models and experiences associated with the complexity of behavioural decision processes and socio‐economic phenomena. DECON 2017 was held at the Polytechnic of Porto, ISEP, Portugal, as part of the 14th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence. For the second consecutive year, the Editors of this book have drawn inspiration from Herbert A. Simon’s immense body of work and argue that Simon precipitated something akin to a revolution in microeconomics focused on the concept of decision‐making. Further, it is worth noting that the recognition of relevant decision‐making takes place in a range of critical subject areas and research fields, including economics, finance, information systems, small and international business management, operations, and production. Therefore, decision‐making issues are of fundamental importance in all branches of economics addressed both deductively and inductively. Not surprisingly, the study of decision‐making has seen growing empirical research efforts in the economic literature over the last sixty years and, more recently, a variety of insightful cutting‐edge experimental, behavioural and computational approaches. Additionally, the awareness regarding generalizations and reductions to express economic concepts has led, on the one hand, to an increasing risk of spreading the language of mathematics as a rhetorical tool and, on the other hand, to an oversimplification and overlooking of some crucial details, especially when it comes to human decisions and, hence, economic behaviour. That awareness, however, has helped to produce an extraordinary volume of empirical research aimed at discovering how economic agents cope with complex decisions. In this sense, the international scientific community acknowledges Herbert A. Simon’s research endeavours to understand the processes involved in economic decision‐making and their implications for the advancement of economic professions. Within the field of decision‐making, indeed, Simon’s rejection of the standard decision‐making models used in neoclassical economics inspired social scientists worldwide to develop research programmes in order to study decision‐making empirically. The main achievements concern decision‐making for individuals, firms, markets, governments, institutions, and, last but not least, science and research.

Reason in Human Affairs

Reason in Human Affairs
Author: Herbert Simon
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 130
Release: 1990-07-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0804766681

What can reason (or more broadly, thinking) do for us and what can't it do? This is the question examined by Herbert A. Simon, who received the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences "for his pioneering work on decision-making processes in economic organizations." The ability to apply reason to the choice of actions is supposed to be one of the defining characteristics of our species. In the first two chapters, the author explores the nature and limits of human reason, comparing and evaluating the major theoretical frameworks that have been erected to explain reasoning processes. He also discusses the interaction of thinking and emotion in the choice of our actions. In the third and final chapter, the author applies the theory of bounded rationality to social institutions and human behavior, and points out the problems created by limited attention span human inability to deal with more than one difficult problem at a time. He concludes that we must recognize the limitations on our capabilities for rational choice and pursue goals that, in their tentativeness and flexibility, are compatible with those limits.

Models of a Man

Models of a Man
Author: Mie Augier
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 596
Release: 2004-03-26
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9780262012089

Essays that pay tribute to the wide-ranging influence of the late Herbert Simon, by friends and colleagues. Herbert Simon (1916-2001), in the course of a long and distinguished career in the social and behavioral sciences, made lasting contributions to many disciplines, including economics, psychology, computer science, and artificial intelligence. In 1978 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his research into the decision-making process within economic organizations. His well-known book The Sciences of the Artificial addresses the implications of the decision-making and problem-solving processes for the social sciences. This book (the title is a variation on the title of Simon's autobiography, Models of My Life) is a collection of short essays, all original, by colleagues from many fields who felt Simon's influence and mourn his loss. Mixing reminiscence and analysis, the book represents "a small acknowledgment of a large debt." Each of the more than forty contributors was asked to write about the one work by Simon that he or she had found most influential. The editors then grouped the essays into four sections: "Modeling Man," "Organizations and Administration," "Modeling Systems," and "Minds and Machines." The contributors include such prominent figures as Kenneth Arrow, William Baumol, William Cooper, Gerd Gigerenzer, Daniel Kahneman, David Klahr, Franco Modigliani, Paul Samuelson, and Vernon Smith. Although they consider topics as disparate as "Is Bounded Rationality Unboundedly Rational?" and "Personal Recollections from 15 Years of Monthly Meetings," each essay is a testament to the legacy of Herbert Simon—to see the unity rather than the divergences among disciplines.

The Cult of the Market

The Cult of the Market
Author: Lee Boldeman
Publisher: ANU E Press
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2007-10-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1921313544

"'The Cult of the Market: Economic Fundamentalism and its Discontents' disputes the practical value of the shallow, all-encompassing, dogmatic, economic fundamentalism espoused by policy elites in recent public policy debates, along with their gross simplifications and sacred rules. Economics cannot provide a convincing overarching theory of government action or of social action more generally. Furthermore, mainstream economics fails to get to grips with the economic system as it actually operates. It advocates a more overtly experimental, eclectic and pragmatic approach to policy development which takes more seriously the complex, interdependent, evolving nature of society and the economy. Importantly, it is an outlook that recognises the pervasive influence of asymmetries of wealth, power and information on bargaining power and prospects throughout society. The book advocates a major reform of the teaching of economics"--Provided by publisher.

Decision Science for Future Earth

Decision Science for Future Earth
Author: Tetsukazu Yahara
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2021-01-29
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9811586322

This open access book provides a theoretical framework and case studies on decision science for regional sustainability by integrating the natural and social sciences. The cases discussed include solution-oriented transdisciplinary studies on the environment, disasters, health, governance and human cooperation. Based on these case studies and comprehensive reviews of relevant works, including lessons learned from past failures for predictable surprises and successes in adaptive co-management, the book provides the reader with new perspectives on how we can co-design collaborative projects with various conflicts of interest and how we can transform our society for a sustainable future. The book makes a valuable contribution to the global research initiative Future Earth, promoting transdisciplinary studies to bridge the gap between science and society in knowledge generation processes and supporting efforts to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Compared to other publications on transdisciplinary studies, this book is unique in that evolutionary biology is used as an integrator for various areas related to human decision-making, and approaches social changes as processes of adaptive learning and evolution. Given its scope, the book is highly recommended to all readers seeking an integrated overview of human decision-making in the context of social transformation.

Shaping Written Knowledge

Shaping Written Knowledge
Author: Charles Bazerman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1988
Genre: Technical writing
ISBN: 9780299116941

The forms taken by scientific writing help to determine the very nature of science itself. In this closely reasoned study, Charles Bazerman views the changing forms of scientific writing as solutions to rhetorical problems faced by scientists arguing for their findings. Examining such works as the early Philosophical Transactions and Newton's optical writings as well as Physical Review, Bazerman views the changing forms of scientific writing as solutions to rhetorical problems faced by scientists. The rhetoric of science is, Bazerman demonstrates, an embedded part of scientific activity that interacts with other parts of scientific activity, including social structure and empirical experience. This book presents a comprehensive historical account of the rise and development of the genre, and views these forms in relation to empirical experience.