Rational Decisions in Organisations
Rational Decisions in Organisations

Author: Frédéric Adam

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2022-05-30

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1000543102

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Managers in organisations must make rational decisions. Rational decision making is the opposite of intuitive decision making. It is a strict procedure utilising objective knowledge and logic. It involves identifying the problem to solve, gathering facts, identifying options and outcomes, analysing them, considering all the relationships and selecting the decision. Rational decision making requires support: methods and software tools. The identification of the problem to solve needs methods that would measure and evaluate the current situation. Identification and evaluation of options and analysis of the available possibilities involves analysis and optimisation methods. Incorporating intuition into rational decision making needs adequate methods that would translate ideas or observed behaviours into hard data. Communication, observation and opinions recording is hardly possible today without adequate software. Information and data that form the input, intermediate variables and the output must be stored, managed and made accessible in a user-friendly manner. Rational Decisions in Organisations: Theoretical and Practical Aspects presents selected recent developments in the support of the widely understood rational decision making in organisations, illustrated through case studies. The book shows not only the variety of perspectives involved in decision making, but also the variety of domains where rational decision support systems are needed. The case studies present decision making by medical doctors, students and managers of various universities, IT project teams, construction companies, banks and small and large manufacturing companies. Covering the richness of relationships in which the decisions should and must be taken, the book illustrates how modern organisations operate in chains and networks; they have multiple responsibilities, including social, legal, business and ethical duties. Nowadays, managers in organisations can make transparent decisions and consider a multitude of stakeholders and their diverse features, incorporating diverse criteria, using multiple types and drivers of information and decision-making patterns, and referring to numerous lessons learned. As the book makes clear, the marriage of theoretical ideas with the possibilities offered by technology can make the decisions in organisations more rational and, at the same time, more human.

Debating Rationality
Debating Rationality

Author: Jennifer J. Halpern

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9780801433788

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"Debating Rationality is a terrific collection of essays written by an obviously first rate set of scholars. Several recent books have attempted to make similar points, but this volume pushes the ideas in new directions, rather than simply restating what are now established themes."--Roderick M. Kramer, co-author of Trust in OrganizationsDecision makers strive to be rational. Traditionally, rational decisions maximize an appropriate return. The contributors to this book challenge the common assumption that good decisions must be rational in this economic sense. They emphasize that the decision-making process is influenced by social, organizational, and psychological considerations as well as by economic concerns. Relationships, time pressure, external demands for specific types of performance, contractual expectations, human biases, and reactions to unfair treatment alter the decision-making context and the resulting decision outcomes.

The Rationality Quotient
The Rationality Quotient

Author: Keith E. Stanovich

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2016-09-30

Total Pages: 479

ISBN-13: 0262034840

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How to assess critical aspects of cognitive functioning that are not measured by IQ tests: rational thinking skills. Why are we surprised when smart people act foolishly? Smart people do foolish things all the time. Misjudgments and bad decisions by highly educated bankers and money managers, for example, brought us the financial crisis of 2008. Smart people do foolish things because intelligence is not the same as the capacity for rational thinking. The Rationality Quotient explains that these two traits, often (and incorrectly) thought of as one, refer to different cognitive functions. The standard IQ test, the authors argue, doesn't measure any of the broad components of rationality—adaptive responding, good judgment, and good decision making. The authors show that rational thinking, like intelligence, is a measurable cognitive competence. Drawing on theoretical work and empirical research from the last two decades, they present the first prototype for an assessment of rational thinking analogous to the IQ test: the CART (Comprehensive Assessment of Rational Thinking). The authors describe the theoretical underpinnings of the CART, distinguishing the algorithmic mind from the reflective mind. They discuss the logic of the tasks used to measure cognitive biases, and they develop a unique typology of thinking errors. The Rationality Quotient explains the components of rational thought assessed by the CART, including probabilistic and scientific reasoning; the avoidance of “miserly” information processing; and the knowledge structures needed for rational thinking. Finally, the authors discuss studies of the CART and the social and practical implications of such a test. An appendix offers sample items from the test.

The Oxford Handbook of Rationality
The Oxford Handbook of Rationality

Author: Alfred R. Mele

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2004-01-08

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 9780198033240

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Rationality has long been a central topic in philosophy, crossing standard divisions and categories. It continues to attract much attention in published research and teaching by philosophers as well as scholars in other disciplines, including economics, psychology, and law. The Oxford Handbook of Rationality is an indispensable reference to the current state of play in this vital and interdisciplinary area of study. Twenty-two newly commissioned chapters by a roster of distinguished philosophers provide an overview of the prominent views on rationality, with each author also developing a unique and distinctive argument.

Mathematics, Education, and Other Endangered Species
Mathematics, Education, and Other Endangered Species

Author: Shlomo Vinner

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-04-26

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 3319900358

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This book examines the critical roles and effects of mathematics education. The exposition draws from the author’s forty-year mathematics career, integrating his research in the psychology of mathematical thinking into an overview of the true definition of math. The intention for the reader is to undergo a “corrective” experience, obtaining a clear message on how mathematical thinking tools can help all people cope with everyday life. For those who have struggled with math in the past, the book also aims to clarify that math learning difficulties are likely a result of improper pedagogy as opposed to any lack of intelligence on the part of the student. This personal treatise will be of interest to a variety of readers, from mathematics teachers and those who train them to those with an interest in education but who may lack a solid math background.

Media of Reason
Media of Reason

Author: Matthias Vogel

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2012-11-06

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0231527756

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Matthias Vogel challenges the belief, dominant in contemporary philosophy, that reason is determined solely by our discursive, linguistic abilities as communicative beings. In his view, the medium of language is not the only force of reason. Music, art, and other nonlinguistic forms of communication and understanding are also significant. Introducing an expansive theory of mind that accounts for highly sophisticated, penetrative media, Vogel advances a novel conception of rationality while freeing philosophy from its exclusive attachment to linguistics. Vogel's media of reason treats all kinds of understanding and thought, propositional and nonpropositional, as important to the processes and production of knowledge and thinking. By developing an account of rationality grounded in a new conception of media, he raises the profile of the prelinguistic and nonlinguistic dimensions of rationality and advances the Enlightenment project, buffering it against the postmodern critique that the movement fails to appreciate aesthetic experience. Guided by the work of Jürgen Habermas, Donald Davidson, and a range of media theorists, including Marshall McLuhan, Vogel rebuilds, if he does not remake, the relationship among various forms of media—books, movies, newspapers, the Internet, and television—while offering an original and exciting contribution to media theory.

Collective Rationality and Collective Reasoning
Collective Rationality and Collective Reasoning

Author: Christopher McMahon

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2001-08-06

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 9780521011785

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"This book examines the issue of rational cooperation, especially cooperation between people with conflicting moral commitments. The first part considers how the two main aspects of cooperation - the choice by a group of a particular cooperative scheme and the decision by each member to contribute to that scheme - can be understood as guided by reason. The second part explores how the activity of reasoning itself can take a cooperative form. The book is distinctive in offering an account of what people can accomplish by reasoning together, of the role of deliberation in democratic decision making, and of the negotiation of the proper use of concepts. Presenting for the first time a detailed analysis of the general problem of cooperation and collective reasoning between people with different moral commitments, this book will be of particular interest to philosophers of the social sciences and to students in political science, sociology and economics." --Cambridge Press.

Bayesian Rationality
Bayesian Rationality

Author: Mike Oaksford

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2007-02-22

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 0198524498

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For almost 2,500 years, the Western concept of what is to be human has been dominated by the idea that the mind is the seat of reason - humans are, almost by definition, the rational animal. In this text a more radical suggestion for explaining these puzzling aspects of human reasoning is put forward.

Rational Rules
Rational Rules

Author: Shaun Nichols

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-02-11

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0192640194

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Moral systems, like normative systems more broadly, involve complex mental representations. Rational Rules proposes that moral learning can be understood in terms of general-purpose rational learning procedures. Nichols argues that statistical learning can help answer a wide range of questions about moral thought: Why do people think that rules apply to actions rather than consequences? Why do people expect new rules to be focused on actions rather than consequences? How do people come to believe a principle of liberty, according to which whatever is not expressly prohibited is permitted? How do people decide that some normative claims hold universally while others hold only relative to some group? The resulting account has both empiricist and rationalist features: since the learning procedures are domain-general, the result is an empiricist theory of a key part of moral development, and since the learning procedures are forms of rational inference, the account entails that crucial parts of our moral system enjoy rational credentials. Moral rules can also be rational in the sense that they can be effective for achieving our ends, given our ecological settings. Rational Rules argues that at least some central components of our moral systems are indeed ecologically rational: they are good at helping us attain common goals. Nichols argues that the account might be extended to capture moral motivation as a special case of a much more general phenomenon of normative motivation. On this view, a basic form of rule representation brings motivation along automatically, and so part of the explanation for why we follow moral rules is that we are built to follow rules quite generally.

The Architecture of Reason
The Architecture of Reason

Author: Robert Audi

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 0195141121

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This book sets out a theory of rationality applicable to both practical and theoretical reason. Audi explains the role of experience in grounding rationality, delineates the structure of central elements and attacks the egocentric view of rationality.