Managerial-finance

Max Bazerman had one central purpose in mind when he wrote his book, Judgment In Managerial Decision Making. He hoped to improve the judgment and decision making skills of his audience, whether they be managers of multi-billion dollar corporations or consumers deciding how much to offer a salesman for a new car. Through the use of vivid real-world examples Max Bazerman identifies systematic ways in which judgment and decision making skills deviate from rationality under uncertain conditions. The end result is that the reader can readily comprehend the concepts outlined in the book and easily apply them to his or her own life.

The only major weakness in the book has to do with its discussion of the multiparty decision-making process. Because of the complex dynamics of these multiparty situations, Bazerman is forced to limit his coverage to only a select number of issues that he believes are especially pertinent to understanding decision making among several groups. Academics have also spent less formal research time on multiparty decision-making versus two-party and individual decision making. Therefore, the number of real-world contemporary examples are quite limited, making the reader less inclined to believe the results.

There are many quantitative books on Decision Making Theory but this book deals basically with the subjective aspects of Decision Making. I used it at the University of São Paulo as textbook for a graduate class on Decision Making under Uncertainty together with Clemen & Reilly's book "Making Hard Decisions".

Bazerman's focus on common decion biases and heuristics makes us think a lot about how we make decisions and normally has nothing to do with rational quantitative "perfect world" decision making normally teached at business schools. Do read this book if Decision Making Theory is important for you, this is really a classic on this subject!!!! With less than 200 pages you really can't afford not reading it.

Fantastic introduction to the field of judgement. I like the following about the book:

1) Concise, and to the point
2) nly a few examples. I imagine that most people reading this book will be fairly theoretical thinkers, so won't need many examples
3) Covers a wide range of judgemental fallacies. A good book to get a feel for the field.