The problem on the desk
How do people in organisations decide when information and computational capacity are limited? Simon replaced an unrestricted maximizing agent with a model of choice that uses attainable information, simplified comparisons and acceptable alternatives.1
A life in moments
- 1916
Milwaukee
Born on 15 June.2
- 1936
University of Chicago · Chicago
Graduated and began research on municipal administration.3
- 1942
Illinois Institute of Technology · Chicago
Joined the political-science faculty.3
- 1943
University of Chicago · Chicago
Completed his doctorate on administrative decision.4
- 1949
Carnegie Institute of Technology · Pittsburgh
Helped establish the Graduate School of Industrial Administration.5
- 1955
Published A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice.6
- 1978
Received the economics prize for research on organisational decision-making.7
- 2001
Carnegie Mellon University
Died after a career at Carnegie Mellon.7
Every line rests on a dated source (numbered below) unless it carries a mark: R for an inference, S for a story as told.
In their own words
My career was settled at least as much by drift as by choice.
A story
A term paper became a research programme
Simon traces his interest in organisational decisions to an undergraduate field study. The term paper led to a municipal-administration assistantship and then to a Berkeley research group.3
Around Simon
- mentor Henry Schultz Simon names Henry Schultz as his principal Chicago mentor.3
Advisor in the record Harold Dwight Lasswell Students in the record Allen Newell, John Muth, Saras Sarasvathy Mathematics Genealogy Project record
The genealogy lists only what the database records; a missing name is not a missing teacher.
The card in the book
Trained in political science at the University of Chicago (doctorate, 1943), he began with studies of municipal administration that he later classed as operations research, taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology from 1942, and from 1949 helped to develop the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University. In Administrative Behavior and later works he described decision-makers in organisations whose capacity for rational action is limited and who settle for a satisfactory alternative; “bounded rationality” and “satisficing” are his terms for this. With Charles Holt, Franco Modigliani and John Muth he developed linear decision rules for production and inventory planning; with Allen Newell, whom he met at RAND in 1952, he wrote early computer programs that simulated human problem solving. He shared the 1975 Turing Award with Newell and received the 1978 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for research on decision-making in economic organisations.
Main works Administrative Behavior (1947); Models of Man (1957); Planning Production, Inventories, and Work Force, with C. C. Holt, F. Modigliani and J. F. Muth (1960); The Sciences of the Artificial (1969); Human Problem Solving, with A. Newell (1972).
To read further
- Herbert A. Simon: autobiographical statement in Les Prix Nobel 1978, Herbert A. Simon (1978) · autobiographical statement
Sources (7)
- A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice, Herbert A. Simon, 1955; pp. 99–104
- Herbert A. Simon: autobiographical statement in Les Prix Nobel 1978, Herbert A. Simon, 1978; PDF p. 1
- Herbert A. Simon: autobiographical statement in Les Prix Nobel 1978, Herbert A. Simon, 1978; PDF p. 2
- Mathematics Genealogy Project: Herbert Simon, Mathematics Genealogy Project; Degree and dissertation
- Herbert A. Simon: autobiographical statement in Les Prix Nobel 1978, Herbert A. Simon, 1978; PDF p. 3
- A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice, Herbert A. Simon, 1955; p. 99
- Nobel Laureates: Herbert Simon, Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business; Herbert Simon subsection
The facts on this page were gathered for the site from the sources listed, each checked against its locator; the book's card is reproduced unchanged.