ADMINISTRATIVE BEHAVIOR A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organization By HERBERT A, SIMON Assistant Professor of Political Science, Illinois Institute of Technology Preliminary Edition Copyright, 1945 by Herbert A, Simon Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago, 1945"and certainly there were many others . ... from whom I had assimilated a word, a glance, but of whom as indi- vidual beings | remembered nothing; a book is a great cemetery in which, for the most part, the names upon the tombs are effaced." Marcel Proust Time RegainedPREFACE This study represents an attempt to construct for myself tools which I could use in my own research in the ficld of pub- lic administration. It derived from my conviction Lhat we do not_yet have, in this field, adequate linguistic and conceptual tools for realistically and significantly describing even a sim- ple administrative organization--describing it, that is, in such A way that our description can provide the basis for a scientific analysis of the effectiveness of its structure and operation. T have read few studies of administrative organizations wherein I felt that the roal flesh-and-bones of the organization was caught and set down in words; I have encountered even fewer in which T was convinced that the conclusions aa to the effectiveness of Lhe organization or the recommendations for its improvement could be deduced from the evidence presented. Perhaps these doubts are personal to myself, and represent an undue scepticism, If they are shared: by others in the field of administrative research, they constitute a serious indictmont of our science, and of ourselves as acientiste. An experiment jn chemistry derives its validity--its scientific authority--from its reproducibility, and unless it is described in sufficient do- tail so that it can be repeated, it is useless. In administration we have as yet only a very imperfect ability to describe what has happened in our administrative "experiments"--much less to insure their reproducibility. Before we can establish any immutable "principles" of admin- istration, we must be able to describe, in words, exactly how an administrative organization locks, and exactly how the organiza- tion works. Ac a basis for my own studies in administration, I have attempted to construct a vocabulary which will permit such description, and this volume records the conclustions I have reached. These conclusions. do not constitute a "theory" of ad- ministration, for except for a few dicta offered by way of hypo- thesis, no principles of administration are laid down. If any "theory" is involved, 1t 1e that decision-making is the heart of administration, and that the vocabulary of administrative theory muet be derived from the logic and psychology of human choice. I am publishing a prelininary draft of the study at this time for two reasons, First, I wish to have the benefit of the criti- ism and comments of co-workers in this field, for I am not un- aware of the cruditice of the study in its present form. Second, I hope that othor persons besides myself will bo interested in applying the scheme suggested here in their own analysis of ad~ ministrative organization. Such applications will provide the only real test of its validity and usefulness, Some of the ideas set forth herein have already been publish- ed in an article entitled "Decision-Making and Administrative Organization", in the Public Administration Review, Winter 1944.