Smart Choices : A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions ISBN: 9781633691056 Platform/Publisher: EBSCO eBooks / Harvard Business Review Press Digital rights:Users: unlimited; Printing: limited; Download: limited Subjects: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Decision-Making & Problem Solving;
In 1966, the Lovin' Spoonful had a #2 hit with "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?" Two years later, Raiffa answered that question for a generation of academics with his book Decision Analysis, whose argumentÄthat decision-making skills can be learned and applied as a discipline of their ownÄmade Raiffa deeply influential in management and social science. Raiffa (a former professor at Harvard Business School), his longtime associate Hammond (a professor of management and engineering at the University of Southern California) and Ralph Keeney (The Art and Science of Negotiation) here explain decision-analysis techniques and stratagems for the benefit of nonspecialists. They provide substantial, straightforward explanations of concepts (risk tolerance, sunk costs, desirability curves) that sound arcane but may help readers to buy the right car, choose a mutual fund, decide on a school, or plan a vacation. Unfortunately, the lingo of self-help often substitutes for the jargon of management consulting, as when Raiffa's famous five decision steps become the trendy acronym PrOACT. And the example problems can seem clichd, two-dimensional or implausible, even when based on fact. Nevertheless, recommendations like "Remember that the value of an incremental change depends on what you start with" and "Make sure your subordinates reflect your organization's risk tolerance in their decisions" are, at the least, good reminders that the logic of decision making is often counterintuitive; at best, they are an important, useful set of insights. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Howard Raiffa was born in the Bronx, New York on January 24, 1924. He was attending City College when he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, where he was a radar specialist. He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1946, a master's degree in statistics, and a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He taught at Columbia University from 1952 to 1957 and then joined the faculty of the business school at Harvard University. He was a co-founder of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard (now the Harvard Kennedy School). He was a member of the university faculty for 37 years before retiring in 1994.
He pioneered what became known as decision science - a discipline that encompasses negotiating techniques, conflict resolution, risk analysis, and game theory. He was the author of 11 books including Games and Decisions: Introduction and Critical Survey written with R. Duncan Luce, Applied Statistical Decision Theory written with Robert Schlaifer, The Art and Science of Negotiation: How to Resolve Conflicts and Get the Best Out of Bargaining, Decision Analysis: Introductory Lectures on Choices Under Uncertainty, and Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions written with John S. Hammond and Ralph L. Keeney. He died from Parkinson's disease on July 8, 2016 at the age of 92.
