According to Simon(1977), most human decision making, whether organizational or individual, involves a willingness to settle for a satisfactory solution, “something less than the best.” When satisficing, the decision maker sets up an aspiration, a goal, or a desired level of performance and then searches the alternatives until one is found that achieves this level.
The usual reasons for satisficing are time pressures (e.g., decisions may lose value over time), the ability to achieve optimization (e.g., solving some models could take a really long time, and recognition that the marginal benefit of a better solution is not worth the marginal cost to obtain it(e.g., in searching the Internet, you can look at only so many Web sites before you run out of time and energy ).
In such a situation, the decision maker is behaving rationally, though in reality he or she is satisficing.