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Herbert A. Simon. political scientist / by Jonathan Bendor -- Satisficing. a pretty good heuristic / by Jonathan Bendor, Sunil Kumar, and David A.Siegel -- A model of muddling through / by Jonathan Bendor -- A perfect is the enemy of the best. Adaptive versus optimal organizational reliability / by Jonathan Bendor and Sunil Kumar -- Garbage can theory / by Jonathan Bendor, Terry Mol, and Ken Shotts -- Institutions and individuals / by Jonathan Bendor.

This essay explores the early history of Herbert Simon’s principle of bounded rationality in the context of his Artificial Intelligence research in the mid 1950s. It focuses in particular on how Simon and his colleagues at the RAND Corporation translated a model of human reasoning into a computer program, the Logic Theory Machine. They were motivated by a belief that computers and minds were the same kind of thing—namely, information-processing systems. The Logic Theory Machine program was a model of how people solved problems in elementary mathematical logic. However, in making this model actually run on their 1950s computer, the JOHNNIAC, Simon and his colleagues had to navigate many obstacles and material constraints quite foreign to the human experience of logic. They crafted new tools and engaged in new practices that accommodated the affordances of their machine, rather than reflecting the character of human cognition and its bounds. The essay argues that tracking this implementation effort shows that “internal” cognitive practices and “external” tools and materials are not so easily separated as they are in Simon’s principle of bounded rationality—the latter often shaping the dynamics of the former.

We present a concise summary of the personal and professional life of Herbert Alexander Simon.

This review of Turner’s “Computational Artifacts” focuses on one of the key novelties of the book, namely the proposal to understand the nature of computer programs as a “trinity” of specification, symbolic program, and physical process, replacing the traditional dualist views of programs as functional/structural or as symbolic/physical. This trinitarian view is found to be robust and helpful to solve typical issues of dualist views. Drawing comparisons with Simon’s view of the artifact as an interface, the author suggests that this trinitarian view may characterize not only computational artifacts but also artifacts in general. One ambiguity is however noticed on the denotation of what Turner actually calls the “physical process.”

Abstract This paper examines the dispute between Burge and McDowell over methodology in the philosophy of perception. Burge (2005, 2011) has argued that the disjunctivism posited by naive perceptual realists is incompatible with the results of current perceptual science, while McDowell (2010, 2013) defends his disjunctivism by claiming an autonomous field of enquiry for perceptual epistemology, one that does not employ the classificatory schemes of the science. Here it is argued that the crucial point at issue in the dispute is Burge’s acceptance, and McDowell’s rejection, of the ‘Cartesian idealization’ of mind as a self-contained system. Burge’s case against disjunctivism rests on the assumption of a clearly demarcated boundary between mind and world, a picture of the mind that McDowell’s philosophy reacts against. This boundary is required for scientific, causal explanations of perceptual processing because it is a simplifying assumption that helps present scientists with a clearly demarcated object of investigation. Concurring with McDowell, I conclude that philosophers need not carve up their objects of investigation in the same way.

PurposeAre there smart ways to find heuristics? What are the common principles behind heuristics? We propose an integrative definition of heuristics, based on insights that apply to all heuristics, and put forward meta-heuristics for discovering heuristics.Design/methodology/approachWe employ Herbert Simon’s metaphor that human behavior is shaped by the scissors of the mind and its environment. We present heuristics from different domains and multiple sources, including scholarly literature, practitioner-reports and ancient texts.FindingsHeuristics are simple, actionable principles for behavior that can take different forms, including that of computational algorithms and qualitative rules-of-thumb, cast into proverbs or folk-wisdom. We introduce heuristics for tasks ranging from management to writing and warfare. We report 13 meta-heuristics for discovering new heuristics and identify four principles behind them and all other heuristics: Those principles concern the (1) plurality, (2) correspondence, (3) connectedness of heuristics and environments and (4) the interdisciplinary nature of the scissors’ blades with respect to research fields and methodology.Originality/valueWe take a fresh look at Simon’s scissors-metaphor and employ it to derive an integrative perspective that includes a study of meta-heuristics.

In innovation, the role of aesthetics is important, possibly paramount, but this factor is not reflected in mainstream innovation theory and research. The paper suggests that aesthetics, supported by serendipity, imagination, and creativity constitute the core, i.e., the “soul” of innovation, and that these factors fuel the dynamics of innovation. These factors are set within a framework, a type of conceptual “iron triangle” or trinity of innovation consisting of: diffusion, entrepreneurship, and novelty. Within this, the novelty, this “something” new becomes an innovation because of diffusion, but the diffusion of the innovation is critically dependent on actors with an agency of promoting innovation, i.e., diffusion is pushed by entrepreneurship. Aesthetics fuels this dynamic together with factors related to serendipity, imagination, and creativity. The challenge of incorporating aesthetics and its associates in innovation theory may become feasible by adoption and further development of Herbert Simon's theory of the science of the artificial. The article suggests how this could be done; basically by redefining Simon's notion of the role of the “utility function” in optimization as one that is ruled by aesthetics.

The particular status of the designexecution processes in architecture, as a series of operations to respond to wicked problems, has a very important consequence in relation to their management. If, on the one hand, the need to identify Project Management systems to handle building operations is indeed evident, above all when they are important in terms of economic and human resources employed and of environmental and social impact, on the other, it is also evident that the particular nature of wicked problems, to which these operations must respond, makes it difficult – if not impossible – to apply these same management systems. In the current technological, social and cultural context, with the strong drive towards the digitization of the design and execution processes and in increasingly critical environmental conditions, the question of defining the limits of the management systems is assuming a truly crucial importance. The author immediately tackles the classic theory of organisation (Frederick W. Taylor) and explains the principles of Project Management, starting from Henri Fayol and through the developments of the PMI, as well as of Scientific Management and of the Human Relations approach, showing the limits of these theories in managing design and construction processes.

What exactly is an organization? To answer this question, we will refer to organizational theory formulated and developed in the 20th century. Chester Barnard believed that human groups appear to be organized rather than disorderly crowds because members with a common purpose are working purposively. Herbert A. Simon, who expanded on this idea, considered that making purposive decisions is rational as long as the purposes are accomplished step by step from top to bottom along a hierarchy of ends. However, he pointed out that this hierarchy of ends was incomplete and was, sometimes, contradictory. Regarding technology as an alternative to this, James D. Thompson came to the opinion that if organizations are purposive, their core should consist of one or more technologies. Karl E. Weick depicted the technology-formation process as an organizing process. People will initially repeat, for their various purposes, an interlocked behavior cycle as a common means. If the cycle is stable, people with differing goals will be able to use it, leading to the assembly of a larger module and a gradual shift to a common purpose.