Models of Man: Social and Rational

Scope and Purpose

Models of Man: Social and Rational gathers Herbert Simon's influential essays that rethink models of human behavior used in economics, political science, and organization theory. The collection juxtaposes the idealized "economic man", a fully optimizing, information-complete decision-maker, against richer, more empirically grounded conceptions of people whose choices are shaped by cognitive limits, institutional environments, and social influences. The essays pursue a systematic reconception of decision theory that links individual cognition to organizational processes and public policy.

Bounded Rationality and Satisficing

Simon introduces and develops the idea of bounded rationality: decision makers have limited information, limited computational capacity, and limited time, so they cannot exhaustively search for optimal solutions. Instead of maximizing utility in a global sense, individuals pursue "satisficing", seeking the first acceptable option that meets aspirations or thresholds. This move reframes rationality as a procedural, context-dependent achievement rather than an abstract, unattainable standard. It provides a practical account of choice that explains systematic deviations from the predictions of classical economic models.

Models of Man

The collection contrasts several archetypes of human decision-makers. "Economic man" follows the maximizing calculus assumed in orthodox models; "administrative man" behaves within organizational constraints and routines; "social man" acts under the influence of norms, roles, and institutions that shape preferences and information flow. Simon emphasizes that different models serve different explanatory and predictive purposes. The appropriate model depends on the questions asked, the data available, and the level of aggregation, with each model illuminating distinct regularities in human behavior.

Decision Processes and Organizational Theory

A central theme is the interplay between individual cognitive processes and organizational structures. Simon argues that organizations are deliberate arrangements that economize on individual cognitive limitations by distributing knowledge, creating decision rules, and standardizing procedures. Organizational routines compress complex choice problems into manageable operations, making behavior predictable without assuming omniscient agents. The essays analyze how information processing, communication costs, and hierarchical delegation shape collective outcomes and how organizations evolve to improve problem-solving under constraints.

Methodological and Epistemological Points

Simon champions an empirical and interdisciplinary approach to modeling behavior, combining formal economics, psychology, and emerging computation perspectives. He criticizes overly abstract normative models when they ignore observable decision procedures, advocating instead for models that are both theoretically coherent and empirically testable. The collection shows how formalization can coexist with descriptive realism: simple, tractable models that incorporate cognitive limits can yield stronger empirical fit and clearer policy implications than idealized optimization models.

Implications and Legacy

The essays lay conceptual foundations that have profoundly influenced behavioral economics, cognitive psychology, organizational studies, and artificial intelligence. By foregrounding cognitive constraints and environmental structure, Simon's framework explains puzzles about choice anomalies, routine behavior, and institutional stability. Practical consequences follow for management, regulation, and the design of decision-support systems: policies and organizational designs should aim to reshape choice environments, information flows, and procedures to improve satisficing outcomes. The book's synthesis of normative critique, descriptive precision, and institutional analysis remains a pivotal reference for anyone seeking a realistic theory of human decision-making.

Critical Reach

While the collection stops short of prescribing a single alternative to classical theory, it offers a powerful set of tools and heuristics for integrating psychology with social science models. The emphasis on procedure, constraints, and social context provides a middle ground between formal economics and ethnographic description, enabling systematic study of how people actually decide and how organizations can be designed to support better decisions.