Herbert Simon
Encyclopedia
Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 – February 9, 2001) was an American
political scientist, economist
, sociologist, and psychologist
, and professor—most notably at Carnegie Mellon University
—whose research ranged across the fields of cognitive psychology
, cognitive science
, computer science
, public administration
, economics
, management
, philosophy of science
, sociology
, and political science
. With almost a thousand very highly cited publications, he is one of the most influential social scientists of the 20th century.
Simon was among the founding fathers of several of today's important scientific domains, including artificial intelligence
, information processing
, decision-making, problem-solving, attention economics, organization theory, complex systems
, and computer simulation of scientific discovery. He coined the terms bounded rationality
and satisficing
, and was the first to analyze the architecture of complexity and to propose a preferential attachment
mechanism to explain power law
distributions.
He also received many top-level honors later in life. These include: the ACM
's Turing Award
for making "basic contributions to artificial intelligence, the psychology of human cognition
, and list processing" (1975); the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics "for his pioneering research into the decision-making process within economic organizations" (1978); the National Medal of Science
(1986); and the APA
's Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contributions to Psychology (1993).
As a testament to his interdisciplinary approach, Simon was affiliated with such varied Carnegie Mellon departments as the School of Computer Science
, Tepper School of Business
, Departments of Philosophy, Social and Decision Sciences
, and Psychology.
on June 15, 1916. His father, Arthur Simon (1881–1948), was an electrical engineer who had come to the United States from Germany
in 1903 after earning his engineering degree from the Technische Hochschule
of Darmstadt
. Arthur, an inventor who was granted "several dozen patents", was also an independent patent attorney. Herbert's mother, Edna Marguerite Merkel, was an accomplished pianist whose ancestors had come from Prague
and Cologne
. Herbert's European ancestors had been piano
makers, goldsmith
s, and vintner
s. Simon's father was Jewish and his mother came from a family of Jewish, Lutheran, and Catholic backgrounds.
Herbert Simon was educated as a child in the public school system in Milwaukee where he developed an interest in science. He found schoolwork to be interesting but rather easy. Unlike many children, Simon was exposed to the idea that human behavior could be studied scientifically at a relatively young age due to the influence of his mother’s younger brother, Harold Merkel, who had studied economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
under John R. Commons. Through his uncle’s books on economics and psychology, Simon discovered the social sciences. Simon received both his B.A. (1936) and his Ph.D. (1943) in political science
, from the University of Chicago, where he studied under Harold Lasswell
and Charles Edward Merriam
.
Among his earliest influences, Simon has cited Richard Ely’s economics textbook, Norman Angell
’s The Great Illusion
, and Henry George
’s Progress and Poverty
. In 1933, Simon entered the University of Chicago
, and following those early influences, he studied the social sciences and mathematics. He was interested in biology, but chose not to study it because of his "color-blindness and awkwardness in the laboratory". He chose instead to focus on political science and economics. His most important mentor at the University was Henry Schultz
who was an econometrician and mathematical economist. After enrolling in a course on "Measuring Municipal Governments," Simon was invited to be a research assistant for Clarence Ridley, with whom he coauthored the book Measuring Municipal Activities in 1948. Eventually his studies led him to the field of organizational decision-making, which would become the subject of his doctoral dissertation.
From 1939 to 1942, Simon acted as director of a research group at the University of California, Berkeley
. When the group’s grant was exhausted, he joined the faculty of Illinois Institute of Technology
, where he was a professor of political science from 1942 to 1949, and also served as department chairman. Back in Chicago
, he began participating in the seminars held by the staff of the Cowles Commission who at that time included Trygve Haavelmo
, Jacob Marschak
, and Tjalling Koopmans
. He thus began a more in-depth study of economics in the area of institutionalism
. Marschak brought Simon in to assist in the study he was currently undertaking with Sam Schurr of the “prospective economic effects of atomic energy”.
In 1949, Simon became a professor of administrations and chairman of the Department of Industrial Management at Carnegie Tech (later to become Carnegie Mellon University
). He continued to teach in various departments at Carnegie Mellon, including psychology
and computer science
, until his death in 2001.
From 1950 to 1955, Simon studied mathematical economics and during this time, together with David Hawkins
, discovered and proved the Hawkins-Simon theorem on the “conditions for the existence of positive solution vectors for input-output matrices." He also developed theorems on near-decomposability and aggregation. Having begun to apply these theorems to organizations, Simon determined around 1954 that the best way to study problem-solving was to simulate it with computer programs, which led to his interest in computer simulation of human cognition. End 1950s he was among the first members of the Society for General Systems Research
.
Simon was a member of the First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh. He had a keen interest in the arts. He was a friend of Robert Lepper and Richard Rappaport
and he influenced Lepper's interest in the impact of machine on society. Rappaport also painted Simon's commissioned portrait at Carnegie Mellon University
.
Any decision involves a choice selected from a number of alternatives, directed toward an organizational goal or subgoal. Realistic options will have real consequences consisting of personnel actions or non-actions modified by environmental facts and values. In practice, some of the alternatives may be conscious or unconscious; some of the consequences may be unintended as well as intended; and some of the means and ends may be imperfectly differentiated, incompletely related, or poorly detailed.
The task of rational decision making is to select the alternative that results in the more preferred set of all the possible consequences. This task can be divided into three required steps:
Any given individual or organization attempting to implement this model in a real situation would be unable to comply with the three requirements. It is highly improbable that one could know all the alternatives, or all the consequences that follow each alternative.
The question here is: given the inevitable limits on rational decision making, what other techniques or behavioral processes can a person or organization bring to bear to achieve approximately the best result? Simon writes:
Administrative Behavior, as a text, addresses a wide range of human behaviors, cognitive abilities, management techniques, personnel policies, training goals and procedures, specialized roles, criteria for evaluation of accuracy and efficiency, and all of the ramifications of communication processes. Simon is particularly interested in how these factors directly and indirectly influence the making of decisions.
Weaving in and out of the practical functioning of all of these organizational factors are two universal elements of human social behavior that Simon addresses in Chapter VII—The Role of Authority, and in Chapter X—Loyalties, and Organizational Identification.
Authority is a well studied, primary mark of organizational behavior, and is straightforwardly defined in the organizational context as the ability and right of an individual of higher rank to determine the decision of an individual of lower rank. The actions, attitudes, and relationships of the dominant and subordinate individuals constitute components of role behavior that can vary widely in form, style, and content, but do not vary in the expectation of obedience by the one of superior status, and willingness to obey from the subordinate. Authority is highly influential on the formal structure of the organization, including patterns of communication, sanctions, and rewards, as well as on the establishment of goals, objectives, and values of the organization.
Decisions can be complex admixtures of facts and values. Information about facts, especially empirically proven facts or facts derived from specialized experience, are more easily transmitted in the exercise of authority than are the expressions of values. Simon is primarily interested in seeking identification of the individual employee with the organizational goals and values. Following Lasswell he states that “a person identifies himself with a group when, in making a decision, he evaluates the several alternatives of choice in terms of their consequences for the specified group”. A person may identify himself with any number of social, geographic, economic, racial, religious, familial, educational, gender, political, and sports groups. Indeed, the number and variety are unlimited. The fundamental problem for organizations is to recognize that personal and group identifications can either facilitate or obstruct correct decision making for the organization. A specific organization has to deliberately determine and specify in appropriate detail and clear language its own goals, objectives, means, ends, and values.
Chester Barnard
pointed out that “the decisions that an individual makes as a member of an organization are quite distinct from his personal decisions”.
Personal choices may determine whether an individual joins a particular organization, and continue to be made in his or her extra–organizational private life. But, as a member of an organization, that individual makes decisions not in relationship to personal needs and results, but in an impersonal sense as part of the organizational intent, purpose, and effect. Organizational inducements, rewards, and sanctions are all designed to form, strengthen, and maintain this identification.
The correctness of decisions is measured by two major criteria:
Simon's contributions to research in the area of decision-making have become increasingly mainstream in the business community thanks to the growth of management consulting.
, creating with Allen Newell
the Logic Theory Machine
(1956) and the General Problem Solver
(GPS) (1957) programs. GPS was possibly the first method of separating problem solving strategy from information about particular problems. Both programs were developed using the Information Processing Language
(IPL) (1956) developed by Newell, Cliff Shaw
and Simon. Donald Knuth
mentions the development of list processing in IPL with the linked list
originally called "NSS memory" for its inventors. In 1957, Simon predicted that computer chess
would surpass human chess abilities within "10 years" when, in reality, that transition took about 40 years.
In the early 1960s Simon wrote a paper responding to a claim by the psychologist Ulric Neisser
that machines might be able to replicate 'cold cognition', e.g. processes like reasoning, planning, perceiving, and deciding, but could not replicate 'hot cognition'
, including desiring, feeling pain or pleasure, and having emotions. Simon's paper was eventually published in 1967. It was ignored by the AI research community for some years, but later became very influential e.g. indirectly through the work of Sloman
and Picard
on emotions.
Simon also collaborated with James G. March
on several works in organization theory.
With Allen Newell
, Simon developed a theory
for the simulation
of human problem solving
behavior using production rules. The study of human problem solving
required new kinds of human measurements and, with Anders Ericsson
, Simon developed the experimental technique of verbal protocol analysis. Simon was interested in the role of knowledge in expertise. He said that to become an expert required about 10 years of experience and he and colleagues estimated that expertise was the result of learning roughly 50,000 chunks
of information. A chess
expert was said to have learned about 50,000 chunks or chess position patterns.
Simon was also interested in how humans learn and, with Edward Feigenbaum
, he developed the EPAM
(Elementary Perceiver and Memorizer) theory, one of the first theories of learning
to be implemented as a computer program. EPAM was able to explain a large number of phenomena in the field of verbal learning. Later versions of the model were applied to concept formation and the acquisition of expertise.
He was awarded ACM
's A.M. Turing Award
along with Allen Newell
in 1975. "In joint scientific efforts extending over twenty years, initially in collaboration with J. C. (Cliff) Shaw
at the RAND Corporation
, and subsequentially with numerous faculty and student colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University
, they have made basic contributions to artificial intelligence
, the psychology of human cognition, and list processing."
At the Cowles Commission, Simon’s main goal was to link economic theory to mathematics and statistics. His main contributions were to the fields of general equilibrium and econometrics. He was greatly influenced by the marginalist debate that began in the 1930s. The popular work of the time argued that it was not empirically apparent that entrepreneurs needed to follow the marginalist principles of profit-maximization/cost-minimization in running organizations. The argument went on to note that profit-maximization was not accomplished, in part, because of the lack of complete information. In decision-making, Simon believed that agents face uncertainty about the future and costs in acquiring information in the present. These factors limit the extent to which agents can make a fully rational decision, thus they possess only “bounded rationality
” and must make decisions by “satisficing
,” or choosing that which might not be optimal but which will make them happy enough.
Simon was known for his research on industrial organization. He determined that the internal organization of firms and the external business decisions thereof did not conform to the Neoclassical theories of “rational” decision-making. Simon wrote many articles on the topic over the course of his life mainly focusing on the issue of decision-making within the behavior of what he termed “bounded rationality
”. “Rational behavior, in economics, means that individuals maximizes his utility function under the constraints they face (e.g., their budget constraint, limited choices, ...) in pursuit of their self-interest. This is reflected in the theory of subjective expected utility
. The term bounded rationality
is used to designate rational choice that takes into account the cognitive limitations of both knowledge and cognitive capacity. Bounded rationality is a central theme in behavioral economics. It is concerned with the ways in which the actual decision-making process influences decisions. Theories of bounded rationality relax one or more assumptions of standard expected utility theory”.
Simon determined that the best way to study these areas was through computer simulation modeling. As such, he developed an interest in computer science. Herbert Simon's main interests in computer science were in artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, principles of the organization of humans and machines as information processing systems, the use of computers to study (by modeling) philosophical problems of the nature of intelligence and of epistemology, and the social implications of computer technology. Some of Simon's economic research was directed toward understanding technological change in general and the information processing revolution in particular.
While living in Pittsburgh, PA, he advised the citizenry on various issues including the use of public funds to build stadiums and the method of raising tax revenue. Simon emphasized the usefulness of the land tax, reflecting the early influence of Henry George
on his economic thought.
, developer of a remedial program which has achieved significant success in improving mathematics performance among elementary and high school students. Mighton cites a 2000 paper by Simon and two co-authors which counters arguments by French mathematics educator Guy Brousseau and others suggesting that excessive practice hampers children's understanding:
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
political scientist, economist
Economist
An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...
, sociologist, and psychologist
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
, and professor—most notably at Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
—whose research ranged across the fields of cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology exploring internal mental processes.It is the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems.Cognitive psychology differs from previous psychological approaches in two key ways....
, cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
, computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
, public administration
Public administration
Public Administration houses the implementation of government policy and an academic discipline that studies this implementation and that prepares civil servants for this work. As a "field of inquiry with a diverse scope" its "fundamental goal.....
, economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, management
Management
Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...
, philosophy of science
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
, sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, and political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
. With almost a thousand very highly cited publications, he is one of the most influential social scientists of the 20th century.
Simon was among the founding fathers of several of today's important scientific domains, including artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, information processing
Information processing
Information processing is the change of information in any manner detectable by an observer. As such, it is a process which describes everything which happens in the universe, from the falling of a rock to the printing of a text file from a digital computer system...
, decision-making, problem-solving, attention economics, organization theory, complex systems
Complex systems
Complex systems present problems in mathematical modelling.The equations from which complex system models are developed generally derive from statistical physics, information theory and non-linear dynamics, and represent organized but unpredictable behaviors of systems of nature that are considered...
, and computer simulation of scientific discovery. He coined the terms bounded rationality
Bounded rationality
Bounded rationality is the idea that in decision making, rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their minds, and the finite amount of time they have to make a decision...
and satisficing
Satisficing
Satisficing, a portmanteau "combining satisfy with suffice", is a decision-making strategy that attempts to meet criteria for adequacy, rather than to identify an optimal solution...
, and was the first to analyze the architecture of complexity and to propose a preferential attachment
Preferential attachment
A preferential attachment process is any of a class of processes in which some quantity, typically some form of wealth or credit, is distributed among a number of individuals or objects according to how much they already have, so that those who are already wealthy receive more than those who are not...
mechanism to explain power law
Power law
A power law is a special kind of mathematical relationship between two quantities. When the frequency of an event varies as a power of some attribute of that event , the frequency is said to follow a power law. For instance, the number of cities having a certain population size is found to vary...
distributions.
He also received many top-level honors later in life. These include: the ACM
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...
's Turing Award
Turing Award
The Turing Award, in full The ACM A.M. Turing Award, is an annual award given by the Association for Computing Machinery to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. The contributions should be of lasting and major technical importance to the...
for making "basic contributions to artificial intelligence, the psychology of human cognition
Cognition
In science, cognition refers to mental processes. These processes include attention, remembering, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. Cognition is studied in various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science...
, and list processing" (1975); the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics "for his pioneering research into the decision-making process within economic organizations" (1978); the National Medal of Science
National Medal of Science
The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social sciences, biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics and...
(1986); and the APA
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...
's Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contributions to Psychology (1993).
As a testament to his interdisciplinary approach, Simon was affiliated with such varied Carnegie Mellon departments as the School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science
The School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA is a leading private school for computer science established in 1965. It has been consistently ranked among the top computer science programs over the decades. U.S...
, Tepper School of Business
Tepper School of Business
The Tepper School of Business is a private business school located on Carnegie Mellon University’s campus in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.The school consistently ranks highly among the top business schools in the U.S., as well as in a wide range of specializations, such as finance,...
, Departments of Philosophy, Social and Decision Sciences
Social and Decision Sciences
Social and Decision Sciences, informally known as SDS, is an interdisciplinary academic department within the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University headquartered in Porter Hall in Pittsburgh, PA and led by Department Head John H...
, and Psychology.
Life
Herbert Alexander Simon was born in Milwaukee, WisconsinWisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...
on June 15, 1916. His father, Arthur Simon (1881–1948), was an electrical engineer who had come to the United States from Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
in 1903 after earning his engineering degree from the Technische Hochschule
Technische Hochschule
Technische Hochschule is what an Institute of Technology used to be called in German-speaking countries, as well as in the Netherlands, before most of them changed their name to Technische Universität or Technische Universiteit in the 1970s and in the...
of Darmstadt
Darmstadt
Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...
. Arthur, an inventor who was granted "several dozen patents", was also an independent patent attorney. Herbert's mother, Edna Marguerite Merkel, was an accomplished pianist whose ancestors had come from Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
and Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
. Herbert's European ancestors had been piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
makers, goldsmith
Goldsmith
A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Since ancient times the techniques of a goldsmith have evolved very little in order to produce items of jewelry of quality standards. In modern times actual goldsmiths are rare...
s, and vintner
Vintner
A vintner is a wine merchant. You pronounce it like this In some modern use, in particular in American English, the term is alsoused as a synonym for winemaker....
s. Simon's father was Jewish and his mother came from a family of Jewish, Lutheran, and Catholic backgrounds.
Herbert Simon was educated as a child in the public school system in Milwaukee where he developed an interest in science. He found schoolwork to be interesting but rather easy. Unlike many children, Simon was exposed to the idea that human behavior could be studied scientifically at a relatively young age due to the influence of his mother’s younger brother, Harold Merkel, who had studied economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
under John R. Commons. Through his uncle’s books on economics and psychology, Simon discovered the social sciences. Simon received both his B.A. (1936) and his Ph.D. (1943) in political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
, from the University of Chicago, where he studied under Harold Lasswell
Harold Lasswell
Harold Dwight Lasswell was a leading American political scientist and communications theorist. He was a member of the Chicago school of sociology and was a professor at Yale University in law. He was a President of the American Political Science Association and World Academy of Art and Science...
and Charles Edward Merriam
Charles Edward Merriam
Charles Edward Merriam, Jr. was a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, founder of the behavioralistic approach to political science, and an advisor to several U.S. Presidents...
.
Among his earliest influences, Simon has cited Richard Ely’s economics textbook, Norman Angell
Norman Angell
Sir Ralph Norman Angell was an English lecturer, journalist, author, and Member of Parliament for the Labour Party.Angell was one of the principal founders of the Union of Democratic Control...
’s The Great Illusion
The Great Illusion
The Great Illusion is a book by Norman Angell, first published in Britain in 1909 under the title Europe's Optical Illusion and republished in 1910 and subsequently in various enlarged and revised editions under the title The Great Illusion....
, and Henry George
Henry George
Henry George was an American writer, politician and political economist, who was the most influential proponent of the land value tax, also known as the "single tax" on land...
’s Progress and Poverty
Progress and Poverty
Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth: The Remedy was written by Henry George in 1879...
. In 1933, Simon entered the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, and following those early influences, he studied the social sciences and mathematics. He was interested in biology, but chose not to study it because of his "color-blindness and awkwardness in the laboratory". He chose instead to focus on political science and economics. His most important mentor at the University was Henry Schultz
Henry Schultz
Henry Schultz was an American economist and statistician, one of the founders of econometrics.-Life:Henry Schultz was born on September 4, 1893 in a Polish family in Szarkowszczyzna, the Russian Empire...
who was an econometrician and mathematical economist. After enrolling in a course on "Measuring Municipal Governments," Simon was invited to be a research assistant for Clarence Ridley, with whom he coauthored the book Measuring Municipal Activities in 1948. Eventually his studies led him to the field of organizational decision-making, which would become the subject of his doctoral dissertation.
From 1939 to 1942, Simon acted as director of a research group at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. When the group’s grant was exhausted, he joined the faculty of Illinois Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology
Illinois Institute of Technology, commonly called Illinois Tech or IIT, is a private Ph.D.-granting university located in Chicago, Illinois, with programs in engineering, science, psychology, architecture, business, communications, industrial technology, information technology, design, and law...
, where he was a professor of political science from 1942 to 1949, and also served as department chairman. Back in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, he began participating in the seminars held by the staff of the Cowles Commission who at that time included Trygve Haavelmo
Trygve Haavelmo
Trygve Magnus Haavelmo , born in Skedsmo, Norway, was an influential economist with main research interests centered on the fields of econometrics and economics theory. During World War II he worked with Nortraship in the Statistical Department in New York City. He received his Ph.D...
, Jacob Marschak
Jacob Marschak
Jacob Marschak was an American economist of Ukrainian Jewish origin.- Life :...
, and Tjalling Koopmans
Tjalling Koopmans
Tjalling Charles Koopmans was the joint winner, with Leonid Kantorovich, of the 1975 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences....
. He thus began a more in-depth study of economics in the area of institutionalism
Institutionalism
Institutionalism can refer to:* Old Institutionalism: An approach to the study of politics that focuses on formal institutions of government* New institutionalism: a social theory that focuses on developing a sociological view of institutions, the way they interact and the effects of institutions...
. Marschak brought Simon in to assist in the study he was currently undertaking with Sam Schurr of the “prospective economic effects of atomic energy”.
In 1949, Simon became a professor of administrations and chairman of the Department of Industrial Management at Carnegie Tech (later to become Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
). He continued to teach in various departments at Carnegie Mellon, including psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
and computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
, until his death in 2001.
From 1950 to 1955, Simon studied mathematical economics and during this time, together with David Hawkins
David Hawkins
David Hawkins may refer to:*David Hawkins , American basketball player*David Hawkins , American youngest defector of the Korean War*David Hawkins , current Bishop of Barking...
, discovered and proved the Hawkins-Simon theorem on the “conditions for the existence of positive solution vectors for input-output matrices." He also developed theorems on near-decomposability and aggregation. Having begun to apply these theorems to organizations, Simon determined around 1954 that the best way to study problem-solving was to simulate it with computer programs, which led to his interest in computer simulation of human cognition. End 1950s he was among the first members of the Society for General Systems Research
Society for General Systems Research
The Society for General Systems Research is predecessor of the current International Society for the Systems Sciences , known to be one the first interdisciplinary and international co-operations in the field of systems theory and systems science...
.
Simon was a member of the First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh. He had a keen interest in the arts. He was a friend of Robert Lepper and Richard Rappaport
Richard Rappaport
Richard Rappaport, born 1944 in Pittsburgh, is a classically trained painter of portraits and large-scale figurative works whose pictorial evolution has spiraled towards and away from the Renaissance ideal for half a century....
and he influenced Lepper's interest in the impact of machine on society. Rappaport also painted Simon's commissioned portrait at Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
.
Studying decision-making
Administrative Behavior from 1947 was Herbert Simon’s doctoral dissertation and his first book. It served as the foundation for his life's work. The centerpiece of this book is the behavioral and cognitive processes of making rational human choices, that is, decisions. An operational administrative decision should be correct and efficient, and it must be practical to implement with a set of coordinated means.Any decision involves a choice selected from a number of alternatives, directed toward an organizational goal or subgoal. Realistic options will have real consequences consisting of personnel actions or non-actions modified by environmental facts and values. In practice, some of the alternatives may be conscious or unconscious; some of the consequences may be unintended as well as intended; and some of the means and ends may be imperfectly differentiated, incompletely related, or poorly detailed.
The task of rational decision making is to select the alternative that results in the more preferred set of all the possible consequences. This task can be divided into three required steps:
- the identification and listing of all the alternatives;
- the determination of all the consequences resulting from each of the alternatives; and
- the comparison of the accuracy and efficiency of each of these sets of consequences.
Any given individual or organization attempting to implement this model in a real situation would be unable to comply with the three requirements. It is highly improbable that one could know all the alternatives, or all the consequences that follow each alternative.
The question here is: given the inevitable limits on rational decision making, what other techniques or behavioral processes can a person or organization bring to bear to achieve approximately the best result? Simon writes:
- “The human being striving for rationality and restricted within the limits of his knowledge has developed some working procedures that partially overcome these difficulties. These procedures consist in assuming that he can isolate from the rest of the world a closed system containing a limited number of variables and a limited range of consequences.”
Administrative Behavior, as a text, addresses a wide range of human behaviors, cognitive abilities, management techniques, personnel policies, training goals and procedures, specialized roles, criteria for evaluation of accuracy and efficiency, and all of the ramifications of communication processes. Simon is particularly interested in how these factors directly and indirectly influence the making of decisions.
Weaving in and out of the practical functioning of all of these organizational factors are two universal elements of human social behavior that Simon addresses in Chapter VII—The Role of Authority, and in Chapter X—Loyalties, and Organizational Identification.
Authority is a well studied, primary mark of organizational behavior, and is straightforwardly defined in the organizational context as the ability and right of an individual of higher rank to determine the decision of an individual of lower rank. The actions, attitudes, and relationships of the dominant and subordinate individuals constitute components of role behavior that can vary widely in form, style, and content, but do not vary in the expectation of obedience by the one of superior status, and willingness to obey from the subordinate. Authority is highly influential on the formal structure of the organization, including patterns of communication, sanctions, and rewards, as well as on the establishment of goals, objectives, and values of the organization.
Decisions can be complex admixtures of facts and values. Information about facts, especially empirically proven facts or facts derived from specialized experience, are more easily transmitted in the exercise of authority than are the expressions of values. Simon is primarily interested in seeking identification of the individual employee with the organizational goals and values. Following Lasswell he states that “a person identifies himself with a group when, in making a decision, he evaluates the several alternatives of choice in terms of their consequences for the specified group”. A person may identify himself with any number of social, geographic, economic, racial, religious, familial, educational, gender, political, and sports groups. Indeed, the number and variety are unlimited. The fundamental problem for organizations is to recognize that personal and group identifications can either facilitate or obstruct correct decision making for the organization. A specific organization has to deliberately determine and specify in appropriate detail and clear language its own goals, objectives, means, ends, and values.
Chester Barnard
Chester Barnard
Chester Irving Barnard was an American business executive, public administrator, and the author of pioneering work in management theory and organizational studies. His landmark 1938 book, Functions of the Executive, sets out a theory of organization and of the functions of executives in...
pointed out that “the decisions that an individual makes as a member of an organization are quite distinct from his personal decisions”.
Personal choices may determine whether an individual joins a particular organization, and continue to be made in his or her extra–organizational private life. But, as a member of an organization, that individual makes decisions not in relationship to personal needs and results, but in an impersonal sense as part of the organizational intent, purpose, and effect. Organizational inducements, rewards, and sanctions are all designed to form, strengthen, and maintain this identification.
The correctness of decisions is measured by two major criteria:
- adequacy of achieving the desired objective; and
- the efficiency with which the result was obtained. Many members of the organization may focus on adequacy, but the overall administrative management must pay particular attention to the efficiency with which the desired result was obtained.
Simon's contributions to research in the area of decision-making have become increasingly mainstream in the business community thanks to the growth of management consulting.
Contributions to artificial intelligence
Simon was a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, creating with Allen Newell
Allen Newell
Allen Newell was a researcher in computer science and cognitive psychology at the RAND corporation and at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, Tepper School of Business, and Department of Psychology...
the Logic Theory Machine
Logic Theorist
Logic Theorist is a computer program written in 1955 and 1956 by Allen Newell, Herbert Simon and J. C. Shaw. It was the first program deliberately engineered to mimic the problem solving skills of a human being and is called "the first artificial intelligence program." It would eventually prove 38...
(1956) and the General Problem Solver
General Problem Solver
General Problem Solver was a computer program created in 1959 by Herbert Simon, J.C. Shaw, and Allen Newell intended to work as a universal problem solver machine. Any formalized symbolic problem can be solved, in principle, by GPS. For instance: theorems proof, geometric problems and chess...
(GPS) (1957) programs. GPS was possibly the first method of separating problem solving strategy from information about particular problems. Both programs were developed using the Information Processing Language
Information Processing Language
Information Processing Language is a programming language developed by Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, and Herbert Simon at RAND Corporation and the Carnegie Institute of Technology from about 1956...
(IPL) (1956) developed by Newell, Cliff Shaw
Cliff Shaw
J.C. Shaw was a systems programmer at the RAND Corporation. He is a coauthor of the first artificial intelligence program, the Logic Theorist, and was one of the developers of Information Processing Language, a programming language of the 1950s. It is considered the true "father" of the JOSS...
and Simon. Donald Knuth
Donald Knuth
Donald Ervin Knuth is a computer scientist and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University.He is the author of the seminal multi-volume work The Art of Computer Programming. Knuth has been called the "father" of the analysis of algorithms...
mentions the development of list processing in IPL with the linked list
Linked list
In computer science, a linked list is a data structure consisting of a group of nodes which together represent a sequence. Under the simplest form, each node is composed of a datum and a reference to the next node in the sequence; more complex variants add additional links...
originally called "NSS memory" for its inventors. In 1957, Simon predicted that computer chess
Computer chess
Computer chess is computer architecture encompassing hardware and software capable of playing chess autonomously without human guidance. Computer chess acts as solo entertainment , as aids to chess analysis, for computer chess competitions, and as research to provide insights into human...
would surpass human chess abilities within "10 years" when, in reality, that transition took about 40 years.
In the early 1960s Simon wrote a paper responding to a claim by the psychologist Ulric Neisser
Ulric Neisser
Ulric Neisser is an American psychologist and member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a faculty member at Cornell University. In 1995, he headed an American Psychological Association task force that reviewed The Bell Curve and related controversies in the study of intelligence. The task...
that machines might be able to replicate 'cold cognition', e.g. processes like reasoning, planning, perceiving, and deciding, but could not replicate 'hot cognition'
Hot cognition
Hot cognition is a motivated reasoning phenomenon in which a person's responses to stimuli are heightened. Hot cognition might be associated with cognitive arousal, in which a person is much more responsive to environmental factors regardless of the response's impact on learning. A learner who...
, including desiring, feeling pain or pleasure, and having emotions. Simon's paper was eventually published in 1967. It was ignored by the AI research community for some years, but later became very influential e.g. indirectly through the work of Sloman
Aaron Sloman
Aaron Sloman is a philosopher and researcher on artificial intelligence and cognitive science. He is the author of several papers on philosophy, epistemology and artificial intelligence...
and Picard
Rosalind Picard
Rosalind W. Picard is Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab, and co-director of the Things That Think Consortium...
on emotions.
Simon also collaborated with James G. March
James G. March
James Gardner March is Jack Steele Parker professor emeritus at Stanford University and the Stanford University School of Education, best known for his research on organizations and organizational decision making.- Biography :...
on several works in organization theory.
With Allen Newell
Allen Newell
Allen Newell was a researcher in computer science and cognitive psychology at the RAND corporation and at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, Tepper School of Business, and Department of Psychology...
, Simon developed a theory
Theory
The English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...
for the simulation
Simulation
Simulation is the imitation of some real thing available, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system....
of human problem solving
Problem solving
Problem solving is a mental process and is part of the larger problem process that includes problem finding and problem shaping. Consideredthe most complex of all intellectual functions, problem solving has been defined as higher-order cognitive process that requires the modulation and control of...
behavior using production rules. The study of human problem solving
Problem solving
Problem solving is a mental process and is part of the larger problem process that includes problem finding and problem shaping. Consideredthe most complex of all intellectual functions, problem solving has been defined as higher-order cognitive process that requires the modulation and control of...
required new kinds of human measurements and, with Anders Ericsson
Anders Ericsson
Dr. K. Anders Ericsson is a Swedish psychologist and Conradi Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology at Florida State University who is widely recognized as one of the world's leading theoretical and experimental researchers on expertise....
, Simon developed the experimental technique of verbal protocol analysis. Simon was interested in the role of knowledge in expertise. He said that to become an expert required about 10 years of experience and he and colleagues estimated that expertise was the result of learning roughly 50,000 chunks
Chunking (psychology)
Chunking, in psychology, is a phenomenon whereby individuals group responses when performing a memory task. Tests where individuals can illustrate "chunking" commonly include serial and free recall, as these both require the individual to reproduce items that he or she had previously been...
of information. A chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
expert was said to have learned about 50,000 chunks or chess position patterns.
Simon was also interested in how humans learn and, with Edward Feigenbaum
Edward Feigenbaum
Edward Albert Feigenbaum is a computer scientist working in the field of artificial intelligence. He is often called the "father of expert systems."...
, he developed the EPAM
EPAM
EPAM is a psychological theory of learning and memory implemented as a computer program. Originally designed by Herbert Simon and Edward Feigenbaum to simulate phenomena in verbal learning, it has been later adapted to account for data on the psychology of expertise and concept formation. It was...
(Elementary Perceiver and Memorizer) theory, one of the first theories of learning
Learning
Learning is acquiring new or modifying existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.Human learning...
to be implemented as a computer program. EPAM was able to explain a large number of phenomena in the field of verbal learning. Later versions of the model were applied to concept formation and the acquisition of expertise.
He was awarded ACM
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...
's A.M. Turing Award
Turing Award
The Turing Award, in full The ACM A.M. Turing Award, is an annual award given by the Association for Computing Machinery to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. The contributions should be of lasting and major technical importance to the...
along with Allen Newell
Allen Newell
Allen Newell was a researcher in computer science and cognitive psychology at the RAND corporation and at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, Tepper School of Business, and Department of Psychology...
in 1975. "In joint scientific efforts extending over twenty years, initially in collaboration with J. C. (Cliff) Shaw
Cliff Shaw
J.C. Shaw was a systems programmer at the RAND Corporation. He is a coauthor of the first artificial intelligence program, the Logic Theorist, and was one of the developers of Information Processing Language, a programming language of the 1950s. It is considered the true "father" of the JOSS...
at the RAND Corporation
RAND
RAND Corporation is a nonprofit global policy think tank first formed to offer research and analysis to the United States armed forces by Douglas Aircraft Company. It is currently financed by the U.S. government and private endowment, corporations including the healthcare industry, universities...
, and subsequentially with numerous faculty and student colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
, they have made basic contributions to artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, the psychology of human cognition, and list processing."
Contributions to sociology and economics
Herbert Simon has been credited for revolutionary changes in microeconomics. He is responsible for the concept of organizational decision-making as it is known today. He was also the first to discuss this concept in terms of uncertainty; i.e. it is impossible to have perfect and complete information at any given time to make a decision. While this notion was not entirely new, Simon is best known for its origination. It was in this area that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1978.At the Cowles Commission, Simon’s main goal was to link economic theory to mathematics and statistics. His main contributions were to the fields of general equilibrium and econometrics. He was greatly influenced by the marginalist debate that began in the 1930s. The popular work of the time argued that it was not empirically apparent that entrepreneurs needed to follow the marginalist principles of profit-maximization/cost-minimization in running organizations. The argument went on to note that profit-maximization was not accomplished, in part, because of the lack of complete information. In decision-making, Simon believed that agents face uncertainty about the future and costs in acquiring information in the present. These factors limit the extent to which agents can make a fully rational decision, thus they possess only “bounded rationality
Bounded rationality
Bounded rationality is the idea that in decision making, rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their minds, and the finite amount of time they have to make a decision...
” and must make decisions by “satisficing
Satisficing
Satisficing, a portmanteau "combining satisfy with suffice", is a decision-making strategy that attempts to meet criteria for adequacy, rather than to identify an optimal solution...
,” or choosing that which might not be optimal but which will make them happy enough.
Simon was known for his research on industrial organization. He determined that the internal organization of firms and the external business decisions thereof did not conform to the Neoclassical theories of “rational” decision-making. Simon wrote many articles on the topic over the course of his life mainly focusing on the issue of decision-making within the behavior of what he termed “bounded rationality
Bounded rationality
Bounded rationality is the idea that in decision making, rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their minds, and the finite amount of time they have to make a decision...
”. “Rational behavior, in economics, means that individuals maximizes his utility function under the constraints they face (e.g., their budget constraint, limited choices, ...) in pursuit of their self-interest. This is reflected in the theory of subjective expected utility
Subjective expected utility
Subjective expected utility is a method in decision theory in the presence of risk, promoted by L. J. Savage in 1954 following previous work by Ramsey and von Neumann...
. The term bounded rationality
Bounded rationality
Bounded rationality is the idea that in decision making, rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their minds, and the finite amount of time they have to make a decision...
is used to designate rational choice that takes into account the cognitive limitations of both knowledge and cognitive capacity. Bounded rationality is a central theme in behavioral economics. It is concerned with the ways in which the actual decision-making process influences decisions. Theories of bounded rationality relax one or more assumptions of standard expected utility theory”.
Simon determined that the best way to study these areas was through computer simulation modeling. As such, he developed an interest in computer science. Herbert Simon's main interests in computer science were in artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, principles of the organization of humans and machines as information processing systems, the use of computers to study (by modeling) philosophical problems of the nature of intelligence and of epistemology, and the social implications of computer technology. Some of Simon's economic research was directed toward understanding technological change in general and the information processing revolution in particular.
While living in Pittsburgh, PA, he advised the citizenry on various issues including the use of public funds to build stadiums and the method of raising tax revenue. Simon emphasized the usefulness of the land tax, reflecting the early influence of Henry George
Henry George
Henry George was an American writer, politician and political economist, who was the most influential proponent of the land value tax, also known as the "single tax" on land...
on his economic thought.
Contributions to pedagogy
Simon's work has strongly influenced John MightonJohn Mighton
John Mighton, OC is a Canadian author and mathematician. He is the founder of JUMP , a charitable organization that works to educate students in mathematics. He is the author of The Myth of Ability and The End of Ignorance...
, developer of a remedial program which has achieved significant success in improving mathematics performance among elementary and high school students. Mighton cites a 2000 paper by Simon and two co-authors which counters arguments by French mathematics educator Guy Brousseau and others suggesting that excessive practice hampers children's understanding:
Contributions to library science
Satisficing, as defined by Simon, can be applied to library and information science where researchers assess how much information is adequate to meet their information need. With the huge volume of information today, library researchers are forced to use Simon's model of satisficing when searching. The first satisfactory alternative is chosen over the best. Applying satisficing to research is a way for researchers to adjust to the vast amount of information today.External links
- A Tribute to Herbert A. Simon
- Full-text digital archive of Herbert Simon papers
- Mind Models online Artificial Intelligence exhibit
- pioneering research into the decision-making process within economic organizations
- History of Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science BOOK VIII: Herbert Simon, Paul Thagard and Others on Discovery Systems - with free downloads for public use.
- The Architecture of Complexity American Philosophical Society (Vol. 106, No.6) (December 12, 1962)
- IDEAS/RePEc