Andriole, Stephen J. Handbook of Decision Support Systems. Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Professional and Reference Books, Concerned with the design of applied decision-support systems in industry and the federal government. Describes (pages 63-78) multiattribute-utility analysis and software (DecisionMap, Expert Choice, and Arborist), probability trees, influence diagraming (but only as it relates to probability analysis), and decision trees. Explains Bayes’ Theorem in simple clear language with examples. Balachandran, Savrojini. Decision Making: An Information Sourcebook.Phoenix: Oryx, 1987. Comprehensive bibliography through 1987 on decision analysis.
Baron, Jonathan. Thinking and Deciding, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, An informative undergraduate text on thinking processes and decision making. Stresses the importance of considering alternative hypotheses and ensuring they are consistent with the evidence. Elucidates and gives a brief history of expected-value theory.
Bolles, Edmund. A Second Way of Knowing: The Riddle of Human Perception. New York: Prentice-Hall, A thought-provoking work on the question of whether objective external reality exists or is purely in our minds: “We don’t know how perception works and we haven’t a clue how it might work.” Discussion supports the idea that humans instinctively focus mentally. Quotation by psychologist Max Wertheimer (1910) —“Isolate the elements, discover their laws, then reassemble them and the problem is solved”—captures the divergent-convergent cycle of analysis.
Brown, Rex V. “Do Managers Find Decision Theory Useful?”Harvard Business Review, 78-89. Discusses a survey of large companies concerning decision-tree analysis. Considers the impact of decision-tree analysis on the companies.
Campbell, Jeremy. The Improbable Machine: What the Upheavals in Artificial Intelligence Research Reveal About How the Mind Really Works. New York: Simon and Schuster, Enlightening comparisons between the human mind and the computer (artificial intelligence). Addresses human illogic, bias, and schemas (mindsets) and the human penchant to seek explanations and to view the world in terms of cause-and-effect patterns.
Daniel, Wayne W. Decision Trees for Management Decision Making: An Annotated Bibliography. Vance Bibliographies, Public Administration Series, Selected bibliography on decision trees.
De Bono, Edward. New Think: The Use of Lateral Thinking in the Generation of New Ideas. New York: Basic Books, A treatise on creative decision making. Recommends “lateral thinking” as a way of generating alternative ways of seeing the pattern of a problem before seeking its solution; another way of restating the problem.
Fishburn, Peter C. The Foundations of Expected Utility. Boston: D. Reidel, A technical, understandable explanation of expected-utility theory. Page 1: In the early eighteenth century mathematicians Daniel Bernoulli and Gabriel Cramer (Bernoulli, 1738) proposed that risky monetary options be evaluated not by their expected return but rather by the expectation of the utilities of their returns. Other thinkers developed this idea in the centuries that followed, but it was Leonard J. Savage’s classic work on the foundation of statistics (Savage, 1954) that presented the first complete axiomatization of subjective expected utility, in which the notion of personal or subjective probability is integrated with expected utility.
Gilovich, Thomas. How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life. New York: The Free Press, A seminal exposition—and the principal foundation of Chapter 1—of the ways in which human reasoning and decision making go awry and why.
Herbert, Theordore T, and Ralph W. Estes. “The Role of the Devil’s Advocate in the Executive Decision Process.”Business Quarterly (Canada), 56-63. Discusses the use of devil’s advocacy for formalized dissent.
Hicks, Michael J. Problem Solving for Business and Management. New York: Chapman & Hall, An outstanding treatise for those seeking a deeper understanding of problem-solving strategies. Addresses among other things problem restatement, brainstorming, the synectics process, divergent thinking, group process, and satisficing.
Hunt, Morton. The Universe Within. New York: Simon & Schuster, Another fundamental source of material for Chapter 1. Consolidates and summarizes what cognitive science had learned as of 1982 about how the mind works. Discusses basic mental traits, logical and analogical reasoning, “mental messing around,” the self-correcting mind, pattern recognition, bias, hypothesis testing, and creativity.
Laplace, Marquis de. Philosophical Essay on Probability (translation of 1825 text). New York: Springer-Verlag, Laplace’s classic work on probability. Pages 3-4: “… if nothing leads us to believe that one of them [possible outcomes] will happen rather than the others … it is impossible to say anything with certainty about their occurrence.”
Machina, Mark J. “Decision-Making in the Presence of Risk,”Science, 537-543. An insightful discussion of expected-utility and non-expected-utility models.
Magee, John F. “Decision Trees for Decision-Making.”Harvard Business Review, 126-138. Explains the role of decision trees in identifying choices, risks, objectives, monetary gains, and information needs for investment decisions.
Margolis, Howard. Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, A lively treatise on the central role that pattern recognition (patterning) plays in analysis and decision making. Discusses false patterns and illusions.
McCormick, John. “The Wisdom of Solomon,”Newsweek, 62-63. Informative article that highlights significant flaws in the way humans inherently make decisions.
McKim, Robert H. Thinking Visually. Belmont, Calif.: Lifetime Learning Publications, An engaging book on the importance of visual thinking (drawing, sketching, diagramming, etc.) to effective problem solving. Argues that the limits of language constrain verbal (nonvisual) thinking. Relates patterning to Gestalt theory (page 9): “A Gestalt is a directly perceived grouping of elements.” Indirectly endorses (page 67) the value of restating a problem at the outset: “The pattern, or Gestalt, that you perceive in a problem strongly influences the way you attempt to solve that problem.”
Mockler, Robert J. Computer Software to Support Strategic Management Decision Making. New York: Macmillan, Reviews a wide range of computer software that supports decision making at all levels of strategic management within a company. Software particularly relevant to The Thinker’s Toolkit:
| Decision Pad | weighted ranking |
| Decision Aide II | weighted ranking |
| BestChoice 3 | paired ranking/weighted ranking |
| Arborist | decision tree |
| Supertree | decision tree |
| Expert Choice | paired ranking/weighted ranking/decision tree |
Neustadt, Richard, and Ernest May. Thinking in Time. New York: The Free Press, A paramount work on the critical role that knowledge of history can play in informing sound and effective decisions. Although the book is aimed at public office holders as well as those who assist, report on, study, or try to influence them and uses U.S. federal government decision making to exemplify techniques for learning and applying history (chronologies, time lines, and “placement”), the lessons are applicable to analysis of any type of problem.
Nisbett, Richard, and Lee Ross. Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, An informative study on the fallibility of human thinking: how humans are intuitively both brilliant and bungling when trying to solve problems. Addresses bias and the vividness criterion (effect).
Nutt, Paul C. Making Tough Decisions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, An insightful discussion of the human decision-making process, different kinds of faulty reasoning, how to manage a decision-making group to overcome these faults, and how our cognitive makeup, interpreted through Myers-Briggs Temperament Indicators, creates preferences for how we approach problem solving. Presents a form of weighted ranking, describes how to use a decision tree, especially for sensitivity analysis, and briefly addresses the role of vivid information (the vividness effect).
Ornstein, Robert. The Psychology of Consciousness. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, A scholarly, comprehensive treatise on human consciousness. On the autocracy of the human mind, the author quotes a colleague (page 4): “I’ll see it when I believe it.”
Ornstein, Robert. The Evolution of Consciousness: Of Darwin, Freud, and Cranial Fire—The Origins of the Way We Think. New York: Prentice-Hall, An absorbing, provocative discourse on the evolution of the human mind, which the author describes as adaptive, not rational. He contends that our “self—our conscious mind—plays a very small role in the mind’s operations: very few of our decisions get shunted up to consciousness; only those that need a top-level decision about alternatives. He says most of our mental reactions are automatic—stored in fixed routines. We know only what is on our mind, rarely what is in our mind. Discusses mental shortcuts, schémas (mind-sets), biases, the vividness effect, and the mind’s treatment of alternatives.
Restak, Richard, M.D. The Brain Has a Mind of Its Own: Insights from a Practicing Neurologist New York: Harmony, A compilation of essays by the author about the brain and its functions. One essay of the same title relates to the question of who’s in charge, the conscious or unconscious mind. Decidedly arguing in favor of the latter, the author cites experiments demonstrating unequivocally that a measurable burst of electricity in the brain occurs about a third of a second before the “owner” of the brain is aware that he or she has decided to act. This evidence flies in the face of common wisdom that we humans, at the moment we make a decision, are acting freely, selecting at will from an infinity of choices.
Rivett, Patrick. The Craft of Decision Making. Chichester, West Sussex, England: John Wiley and Sons, Another insightful study of decision making. Addresses the fallibility of human reasoning, logic versus common sense, and the perils of following one’s intuition.
Robinson, Roxana. Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life. New York: Harper & Row, Biography.
Winson, David L. Group Power: How to Develop, Lead, and Help Groups Achieve Goals. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Summarizes small-group dynamics and leadership skills.
Wisniewski, Mike. Quantitative Methods for Decision Makers. London: Pitman, An illuminating, clearly written introduction for MBA students to the general principles of quantitative (mathematical and statistical) techniques for decision making. Includes a simplified explanation of probability (mutually exclusive and conditionally dependent), decision making under uncertainty, and decision trees.