Experience is currently a hot theme in decision making. For a long time, decision research was almost exclusively focused on new decisions and neglected the importance of experience. It took the field until the 1990s for a new direction in research and theorizing to become visible in the literature. There are parallel movements happening in sociology, political science, social psychology, and business. The purpose of this edited book is to provide a balanced and representative overview of what is currently known about the dynamics of experienced-based decision making. The chapters are written by renowned experts in the field and provide the latest theoretical developments, integrative frameworks, and state-of-the-art reviews of research in the laboratory and in the field.

Love and money are important aspects of the everyday lives of couples. This book focuses on the daily routines of disagreement, conflict and joint decisions on these, and other issues such as work, leisure and children, create in the household. Central to the authors' research is a unique diary study of forty couples, who kept a daily record of their joint decisions over the course of a year. The diaries show how challenging, varied and complex the conflicts and decision making of normal everyday life can be and reveal that goals frequently change during the decision-making process with the result that the final outcome often achieves a goal distinct from the original intention. Furthermore, the dynamics of decision making differ according to the problem at stake, the decision-making history of the couple, and the quality of the partnership. The results of the diary study are discussed within the overall context of current research in the field as a whole, including discussion of joint decision-making case studies, close relationships, decision-making research in general and special research methods. Numerous results of psychological, sociological, economic and consumer behaviour studies are summarised and integrated into a model of household decision-making. This book will be primarily of interest to students and researchers in social psychology and economic psychology, but its interdisciplinary and applied nature will also make it of relevance to professionals working in the fields of family therapy and consumer behaviour.

For the first time, an award-winning Harvard professor shares his wildly popular course on classical Chinese philosophy, showing you how ancient ideas—like the fallacy of the authentic self—can guide you on the path to a good life today. Why is a course on ancient Chinese philosophers one of the most popular at Harvard? Because it challenges all our modern assumptions about what it takes to flourish. Astonishing teachings emerged two thousand years ago through the work of a succession of Chinese scholars exploring how humans can improve themselves and their society. And what are these counterintuitive ideas? Transformation comes not from looking within for a true self, but from creating conditions that produce new possibilities. Good relationships come not from being sincere and authentic, but from the rituals we perform within them. A good life emerges not from planning it out, but through training ourselves to respond well to small moments. Influence comes not from wielding power but from holding back. Excellence comes from what we choose to do, not our natural abilities. In other words, The Path “opens the mind” (Huffington Post) and upends everything we are told about how to lead a good life. Its most radical idea is that there is no path to follow in the first place—just a journey we create anew at every moment by seeing and doing things differently. “With its…spirited, convincing vision, revolutionary new insights can be gleaned from this book on how to approach life’s multifarious situations with both heart and head” (Kirkus Reviews). A note from the publisher: To read relevant passages from the original works of Chinese philosophy, see our ebook Confucius, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi: Selected Passages, available wherever books are sold.

Major New York Times bestseller Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award in 2012 Selected by the New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011 A Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year 2011 Title One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year One of The Wall Street Journal's Best Nonfiction Books of the Year 2011 2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Kahneman's work with Amos Tversky is the subject of Michael Lewis's The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds In his mega bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic.

The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Decision Making comprehensively surveys theory and research on organizational decision-making, broadly conceived. Emphasizing psychological perspectives, while encompassing the insights of economics, political science, and sociology, it provides coverage at the individual, group, organizational, and inter-organizational levels of analysis. In-depth case studies illustrate the practical implications of the work surveyed. Each chapter is authored by one or more leading scholars, thus ensuring that this Handbook is an authoritative reference work for academics, researchers, advanced students, and reflective practitioners concerned with decision-making in the areas of Management, Psychology, and HRM. Contributors: Eric Abrahamson, Julia Balogun, Michael L. Barnett, Philippe Baumard, Nicole Bourque, Laure Cabantous, Prithviraj Chattopadhyay, Kevin Daniels, Jerker Denrell, Vinit M. Desai, Giovanni Dosi, Roger L.M. Dunbar, Stephen M. Fiore, Mark A. Fuller, Michael Shayne Gary, Elizabeth George, Jean-Pascal Gond, Paul Goodwin, Terri L. Griffith, Mark P. Healey, Gerard P. Hodgkinson, Gerry Johnson, Michael Johnson-Cramer, Alfred Kieser, Ann Langley, Eleanor T. Lewis, Dan Lovallo, Rebecca Lyons, Peter M. Madsen, A. John Maule, John M. Mezias, Nigel Nicholson, Gregory B. Northcraft, David Oliver, Annie Pye, Karlene H. Roberts, Jacques Rojot, Michael A. Rosen, Isabelle Royer, Eugene Sadler-Smith, Eduardo Salas, Kristyn A. Scott, Zur Shapira, Carolyne Smart, Gerald F. Smith, Emma Soane, Paul R. Sparrow, William H. Starbuck, Matt Statler, Kathleen M. Sutcliffe, Michal Tamuz, Teri Jane Ursacki-Bryant, Ilan Vertinsky, Bénédicte Vidaillet, Jane Webster, Karl E. Weick, Benjamin Wellstein, George Wright, Kuo Frank Yu, and David Zweig.

The analysis of decision making under uncertainty has again become a major focus of interest. This volume presents contributions from leading specialists in different fields and provides a summary and synthesis of work in this area. It is based on a conference held at the Harvard Business School. The book brings together the different approaches to decision making - normative, descriptive, and prescriptive - which largely correspond to different disciplinary interests. Mathematicians have concentrated on rational procedures for decision making - how people should make decisions. Psychologists have examined how poeple do make decisions, and how far their behaviour is compatible with any rational model. Operations researchers study the application of decision models to actual problems. Throughout, the aim is to present the current state of research and its application and also to show how the different disciplinary approaches can inform one another and thus lay the foundations for the integrated analysis of decision making. The book will be of interest to researchers, teachers - for use as background reading for a decision theory course - students, and consultants and others involved in the practical application of the analysis of decision making. It will be of interest to specialists and students in statistics, mathematics, economics, psychology and the behavioural sciences, operations research, and management science.