Managers can engage in relatively conscious strategies designed to inflate the perceived
riskiness of successful actions, but deliberate efforts on the part of managers to
portray themselves as risk takers are only a minor part ofthe story. Managerial reputations
for risk taking rather than gambling are sustained by the ordinary social processes
for interpreting life and getting ahead. In historical perspective, we have no difficulty distinguishing those who have been brilliant risk takers from those who have been
foolish gamblers, however obscure the difference may have been at the time they were
making their decisions. Post hoc reconstruction permits history to be told in such a way
that "chance"—either in the sense of genuinely probabilistic phenomena or in the sense
of unexplained variation—is minimized as an explanation (Fischhoff 1975; Fischhoff
and Beyth 1975). Thus, risky choices that tum out badly are seen, after the fact, to have
been mistakes. The warning signs that were ignored seem clearer than they were; the
courses that were followed seem unambiguously misguided.