Complexity
Making tasks easier is, perhaps, a desirable
management objective but may be frustrated
by the complexity of tasks an individual
faces. Complexity is a situation where, as with extensiveness, individuals have full
information but cannot use it in any realistic
way. Playing chess is the most quoted example whereby players have all the
information before them to make the best
move but have to adopt a ``strategy'' to
initiate a move. The example is extreme, but
individuals will face similar situations to a
lesser degree in the work place. Thus, we fall
back onto rules and habits to help us make
sense of what we have to deal with. To
continue the chess analogy: this is not a
reflection of a lack of understanding of the
rules of the game, but of a computational
inability to untangle the full structure of the game. In reality, the problem may actually be more complex since, outside the boundaries
of games, the rules of the game are nearly always changing and are often uncertain.
Moreover, the structure of choices (the
available options and their consequences)
may cripple decision making and the
effectiveness of an individual if a standard
optimisation procedure was (even partly) followed.