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alternative and rank them according to our preferences. Anyone who has recently
purchased a new laptop computer or cell phone can attest to the challenge of sorting
through the different strengths and limitations of each brand, model, and plans
offered for support and arriving at the solution that best meets their needs.

In fact, the availability of too much information can lead to analysis paralysis,
where more and more time is spent on gathering information and thinking about it,
but no decisions actually get made. A senior executive at Hewlett-Packard admits that
his company suffered from this spiral of analyzing things for too long to the point
where data gathering led to “not making decisions, instead of us making
[6]
decisions.” Moreover, you may not always be interested in reaching an optimal
decision. For example, if you are looking to purchase a house, you may be willing
and able to invest a great deal of time and energy to find your dream house, but if you
are looking for an apartment to rent for the academic year, you may be willing to take
the first one that meets your criteria of being clean, close to campus, and within your
price range.
Making “Good Enough” Decisions
The bounded rationality model of decision making recognizes the limitations of
our decision-making processes. According to this model, individuals knowingly limit
their options to a manageable set and choose the best alternative without conducting
an exhaustive search for alternatives. An important part of the bounded rationality
approach is the tendency to satisfice, which refers to accepting the first alternative
that meets your minimum criteria. For example, many college graduates do not
conduct a national or international search for potential job openings; instead, they
focus their search on a limited geographic area and tend to accept the first offer in
their chosen area, even if it may not be the ideal job situation. Satisficing is similar to
rational decision making, but it differs in that rather than choosing the best choice and
maximizing the potential outcome, the decision maker saves time and effort by
accepting the first alternative that meets the minimum threshold.
Making Intuitive Decisions
The intuitive decision-making model has emerged as an important decision-
making model. It refers to arriving at decisions without conscious reasoning. Eighty-
nine percent of managers surveyed admitted to using intuition to make decisions at
[7]
least sometimes, and 59% said they used intuition often. When we recognize that
managers often need to make decisions under challenging circumstances with time
pressures, constraints, a great deal of uncertainty, highly visible and high-stakes
outcomes, and within changing conditions, it makes sense that they would not have
the time to formally work through all the steps of the rational decision-making model.
Yet when CEOs, financial analysts, and healthcare workers are asked about the
critical decisions they make, seldom do they attribute success to luck. To an outside
observer, it may seem like they are making guesses as to the course of action to take,
but it turns out that they are systematically making decisions using a different model
than was earlier suspected. Research on life-or-death decisions made by fire chiefs,
pilots, and nurses finds that these experts do not choose among a list of well-thought-
out alternatives. They don’t decide between two or three options and choose the best
one. Instead, they consider only one option at a time. The intuitive decision-making

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