Conventions in Herbert Simon's theory of bounded rationality

Rouslan Koumakhov

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2009, vol. 30, issue 3, 293-306

Abstract: This paper offers a reconstruction of Herbert Simon's decision theory from the conventionalist point of view. It is argued that Simon defined two types of conventions in organizational settings: the first one was specified as a set of customary rules in the workplace, the second one as a shared cognitive model of reality. This paper emphasizes the importance of that approach for economic psychology and its connections with T. Schelling's project of the reorientation of the game theory. The implication of revisiting Simon from the conventionalist viewpoint is that not only may such an approach provide a solution to coordination problems, which is psychologically reliable, but it also leads to a decision paradigm, according to which understanding problems of coordination is impossible without taking into consideration individual cognitive limits and social representations of reality.

Keywords: Bounded; rationality; Organizational; behavior; Coordination; problems; Conventions; Mental; representations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167-4870(09)00017-8
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:30:y:2009:i:3:p:293-306

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Psychology is currently edited by G. Antonides and D. Read

More articles in Journal of Economic Psychology from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().