ABSTRACT
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The enduring legacy of Herbert Simon has demonstrated to mainstream administrative and organiz-
ational thought the limits of rationality and instrumental action. It has also rendered “decision” as
the primary object of analysis. Simon’s now famous formulations of “bounded rationality” and
“Satisficing Man,” who has “not the wits to maximize,” articulated an intellectual framework
within which to understand the conditional and environmental constraints of decision making.
He thus exposed the highly stylized, spurious assumptions of the comprehensively rational,
utility maximizing, individual. Of course, the terms of Simon’s “concessions,” or what Harmon
(1989) calls “artful caveats,” have been widely influential throughout the social sciences. Indeed the
idea of bounded rationality has been taken up by some whose theoretical commitments initially
may not even suggest an affinity with Simon’s work (Scott, 1998; Touraine, 1992).
