The Law of Unintended Consequences

Richard M. Adler
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Richard M. Adler: DecisionPath

Chapter Chapter 3 in Bending the Law of Unintended Consequences, 2020, pp 31-40 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The impacts of the Law of Unintended Consequences (LUC) are pervasive, cutting a wide swath across decisions in business, government, and our personal lives. What accounts for its disruptive power, which frustrates and confounds our best-laid plans and efforts? The short answer is that LUC cuts both deeply and broadly: deeply because its causes permeate the very way we think and attempt to solve problems, and broadly because it operates across all phases of the critical decision-making process. This chapter examines LUC through the pioneering work of Robert K. Merton. Section 3.1 reviews Merton’s groundbreaking analysis of LUC, while Sect. 3.2 discusses the significance of his work in the context of our inquiry.

Keywords: Robert K. Merton; Unintended consequences; Social actions; Critical decisions; Inadequate knowledge; Bounded rationality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-32714-9_3

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-32714-9_3

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