ABSTRACT
Decision making is a construction one places on behaviors and events. There is a dominant ideology of choice in the Western world that reveres the expression of individual preferences and perceived control over outcomes (Sethi & Lepper, 1999). This ideology biases managers in the direction of interventions that affect local, short-term, and observable outcomes, rather than distant, long-term and harder to detect results (Carroll, 1998; Repenning & Sterman, 2000). Residents of the United States expect people to have preferences, to find choice desirable and motivating, and to be skilled at making choices (e.g., Langer, 1975; Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973). The reality is more complex. Simon (1955) pointed out that people avoid choices by taking the first acceptable option, and subsequent theorists have focused research attention on predecisional processes such as framing (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981), sensemaking (Weick, 1995), and recognition via pattern matching (Klein, 1998). Most recently, attention has focused on postdecision processes such as learning (e.g., Argyris & Schon, 1996; Levitt & March, 1988) and failures to consider feedback (Sterman, 1989). In short, decision making can be placed into a larger systemic view as one among many psychological, social, organizational, and cultural processes that shape action.
