Michael Lissack making assume some more or less obvious information constraints imposed by methods of organizing diverse individuals: 1. Problems of attention. Time and capabilities for attention are lim- ited. Not everything can be attended to at once. Too many signals are received. Too many things are relevant to a decision. Because of those limitations, theories of decision making are often better described as theories of attention or search than as theories of choice. They are concerned with the way in which scarce attention is allocated. 2. Problems of memory. The capabilities of individuals and organiza- tions to store information is limited. Memories are faulty. Records are not kept. Histories are not recorded. Even more limited are in- dividual and organizational abilities to retrieve information that has been stored. Previously learned lessons are not reliably retrieved at appropriate times. Knowledge stored in one part of an organization cannot be used easily by another part. 3. Problems of comprehension. Decision makers have limited capac- ities for comprehension. They have difficulty organizing, summa- rizing, and using information to form inferences about the causal connections of events and about relevant features of the world. They often have relevant information but fail to see its relevance. They make unwarranted inferences from information, or fail to connect different parts of the information available to them to form a coherent interpretation. 4. Problems of communication. There are limited capacities for com- municating information, for sharing complex and specialized in- formation. Division of labor facilitates mobilization and utiliza- tion of specialized talents, but it also encourages differentiation of knowledge, competence, and language. It is difficult to commu- nicate across cultures, across generations, or across professional specialties. Different groups of people use different frameworks for simplifying the world.
238
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online