Fallibility in Human Organizations and Political Systems
- 1 May 1991
- journal article
- Published by American Economic Association in Journal of Economic Perspectives
- Vol. 5 (2) , 67-88
- https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.5.2.67
Abstract
This paper presents a perspective on some organizational consequences of human fallibility. It may be easier to get a flavor of the relevant issues by examining the role of fallibility in specific settings, rather than through abstract arguments. So, in the next three sections, I consider several different settings: the question of diversification versus concentration of political authority, the managerial succession process in organizations, and the choice of ideas and projects (including innovation-oriented projects) in organizations. In the last section, I highlight some aspects of the approach underlying the analyses of human fallibility, in particular: the premises concerning an individual decisionmaker, the potential association between the motivation of an organization's employees and their fallibility, and the nature and the aims of the analysis of organizations.Keywords
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