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Introduction
Herbert A. Simon, a 1978 Nobel Prize laureate in Economics, was a staggeringly prolific scholar. His publications include over 800 articles spanning multiple disciplines; he was co-author with over 100 colleagues, and he had numerous translations of 27 books and path-breaking articles in languages as diverse as Japanese, Russian, Mandarin and German. His book, Administrative Behavior[1], is based on his doctoral thesis at the University of Chicago, originally entitled “The Logical Structure of an Administrative Science”, completed in 1942. He claims it was a “moon-lighted dissertation on administrative decision-making during my three years at Berkeley”, after taking his doctoral exams by mail (Simon, 1979). The manuscript went through various refinements and revisions before publication in 1947, in part because certain chapters and excerpts were published in journals like Public Management and Public Administration. It was also enriched by Chester Bernard’s (1938) The Function of the Executive, and Bernard’s copious notes and suggestions for the manuscript. Chapter 7 on “Organizational Equilibrium” in Administrative Behavior paper is largely based on Bernard, as is the chapter on “Authority and Status” in Public Adminitration. The thesis draws heavily on the theories of Chester Barnard, E.C. Tolman, John Dewey and Talcott Parsons. Economist Henry Schults was his thesis advisor, on a committee with such leading scholars as Rudolf Carnap, Nicholas Rashevsky, Harold Lasswell, Charles Merriam and the external outsider, John R. Commons. The thesis was finally accepted by Leonard White, Herman Pritchett, Clarence Ridley and Charner Perry.
In Administrative Behavior, Simon introduced a new concept to the emerging field of organizational theory, docility[2]. Here is how Simon (1976) introduces the concept of docility in a critical chapter on “Psychology of Administrative Decisions”, defined as how an individual in question “observes the consequences of his movements and adjusts them to achieve the desired purpose”:
Docility is characterized, then, by a stage of exploration and inquiry followed by a stage of adaptation. It can be observed in the behavior of individuals and in the behavior of organizations. A man learning to operate an overhead crane first obtains information from someone skilled in its operation as to how it is controlled and what the functions are of the various instruments and levers. He then supplements his...