论文推介 | 西蒙纪念专刊“公共组织决策”出版

简  介

Gary Schwarz、Tom Christensen和朱旭峰共同主持的公共组织决策专刊（Symposium: Decision-making in public organizations: the continued relevance  of Administrative Behavior）近日在《公共行政评论》（Public Administration Review）正式出版。为了纪念赫伯特·西蒙（Herbert Simon）出版《行政行为》75周年，专刊共发表4篇文章，一篇观点短论。论文题目和摘要如下。

  论文摘要  

    01

Bounded Rationality, Satisficing, Artificial Intelligence, and Decision-Making in Public Organizations: The Contributions of Herbert Simon

Gary Schwarz, Tom Christensen, XufengZhu

    02

Strategic Decision Making and Implementation in Public Organizations in the Gulf Cooperation Council: The Role of Procedural Rationality

Khalid Al-Hashimi, Vishanth Weerakkody, Said Elbanna, Gary Schwarz

Based on Herbert Simon's conceptualization of bounded rationality, this article develops and tests an integrative model of the strategic decision-making process (SDMP) and outcomes in public organizations. The model integrates different SDMP dimensions—procedural rationality, intuition, participation, and constructive politics—and examines their impacts on the successful implementation of strategic decisions. Additionally, it analyzes the influence of implementation on the overall outcomes of strategic decisions. The model was tested with data from multiple sources on 170 strategic decisions collected from senior executives working in 38 public organizations in Qatar—a context in which studies on decision making are rare. With the exception of intuition, this study shows a positive impact of all SDMP dimensions on the successful implementation and outcomes of strategic decisions. Successful implementation fully mediates the relationships between procedural rationality, participation, and constructive politics and the outcomes of strategic decisions.

    03

Procedural Rationality in Westminster Systems: How De-Separation Affects the Decision Premise

Keith Dowding, Marija Taflaga

Westminster administrative systems were characterized by a clear separation between the political careers and roles of elected ministers and career civil servants. The former set the values or aims of the organization; the latter utilize those values when generating policy ideas. This separation provides what H.A. Simon calls “procedural rationality.” The decision premise of public servants is (1) an apolitical commitment to government service, and (2) a commitment to advise on and implement the current government values, including expert advice using their personal and institutional memory and procedural knowledge. Using evidence from Australia and the United Kingdom, we track the de-separation of political careers. Policy advice increasingly comes from outside the career public service, including politically appointed special advisors. Furthermore, senior politicians are increasingly drawn from the world of special and external advisors. De-separation changes the decision premise of all actors, which we argue deleteriously affects the nature of policy formation.

    04

Decision-Makers’ Generation of Policy Solutions amidst Negative Performance: Invention or Rigidity?

Joris van der Voet, Elvira Lems

Behavioral theory proposes that decision-makers engage in search to identify satisfactory policy solutions to organizational problems. For complex problems, required solutions cannot be identified merely through search, but must be created and designed. While behavioral theory suggests that negative performance will spur creative solution generation, threat-rigidity theory provides a competing view that decision-makers' creative efforts are ultimately thwarted through restricted information processing and constriction of control. We test these competing expectations through a survey-experimental comparison of the creativity of policy solutions in response to negative budgetary performance, generated by a nationally representative sample of local government decision-makers. The findings indicate that negative performance decreases the creativity of policy solutions as rated by policy experts, and reveals that key mechanisms of threat-rigidity theory are at play. This reduced generation of creative policy solutions amidst negative performance places limits on public organizations' capacity to adapt to adverse circumstances.

    05

How Do Public Managers Learn from Performance Information? Experimental Evidence on Problem Focus, Innovative Search, and Change

Jesper Asring Hansen, Poul Aaes Nielsen

Management decisions are considered important for the performance of public organizations, but how does information about performance influence management decision-making? Developed from Simon's notion of bounded rationality, the behavioral model of performance-based learning suggests that managers adjust their understanding of organizational problems, search for information, and consider initiating change when their organization performs below aspirations. In this paper, we offer experimental evidence of how performance information affects the attitudes and decision-making of public managers. We leverage two experiments conducted among managers in public education. Study 1 uses a question-order experiment to prime only treated respondents to consider performance, whereas study 2 uses treatments with high- and low-performance signals. We find that low performance affects problem focus but not managers' intention to conduct innovative search. We also find that low-performance signals increase preferences for immediate performance-oriented changes but not for other types of changes. We discuss the implications for management decision-making.

    06

Unknowns, Black Swans, and Bounded Rationality in Public Organizationse

Alberto Feduzi, Jochen Runde, Gary Schwarz

“Unknowns” and “Black Swans” have become familiar terms in the public administration literature but tend to be used in different and often conflicting ways. This article provides a typology of the terms, develops a framework for thinking about how their elements relate, and distinguishes four varieties of the Black Swan. Using the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster, 9/11, the international withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the trade boycott associated with the Danish cartoon controversy as examples, we examine how these four varieties may arise in public sector organizations. We offer recommendations on how such organizations might reduce psychological and organizational barriers to uncovering unknowns before they can go on to become Black Swans.

1. 来源：Wiley Online Library（点击“阅读原文”查看原文）
   

2. 时间：2022年08月07日

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2022.08.30
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