Suchergebnisse

Abstract:In order for organizations to adopt procedures and structures that efficiently serve their goals, they need to overcome predictable errors in individual and group judgment and decisionmaking and to distinguish ephemeral from significant environmental changes. I seek to identify factors internal and external to the organization that contribute to overcoming these two problems. I suggest the modern US research university as a case study of a successful organization.

Fil: Ulen, Thomas S. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. College of Law. Champaign, Estados Unidos ; Fil: Ulen, Thomas S. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Institute for Government and Public Affairs. Urbana, Estados Unidos ; "Publicado originalmente en inglés como A Nobel Prize in Legal Science : Theory, Empirical Work, and the Scientific Method in the Study of Law, " University of Illinois Law Review", Vol. 2002, N° 4. Agradecemos al autor y al editor el permiso para traducirlo y publicarlo en esta revista. Traducción de Laura Giuliani, Abogada (UBA) y trabajadora social (Escuela de Servicio Social de Bahía Blanca). Revisión de Magdalena Zold."

The theory of rational choice has become the predominant theory of human behavior in many of the social sciences. The theory holds, among other things, that individuals are rational utility-maximizers and that organizations are rational profit-maximizers. Recent developments in cognitive psychology and in economics suggest that human beings have significant cognitive imperfections that make the routine applicability of the theory of rational choice questionable. The article reviews these developments and, by addressing examples from the field of law and economics, shows how an awareness of cognitive imperfections can help to devise better public policy.