This behavioralv iew of decision makingi s especially relevant
for top managers, who face great complexity and ambiguity in
their tasks. Managers are typically confronted with numerous
bits of informationt hat demand attention (Mintzberg,1 973).
They must decide on appropriater esponses to "important"
stimulia nd discard informationt hat is less important( Weick,
1979). What and how they respond, and how they define
what is "important,"d epends on their interpretationo f the
situation.A nd this interpretationp rocess is simplifiedb y applying
general rules that a manager can rely on (Ranson,
Hinings, and Greenwood, 1980). Hence, cognitively limited
managers view a complex world and formulate understandings
that simplify potential response sets (March and
Simon, 1958:139). As a result, "choice is always exercised
with respect to a limited, approximate, simplified 'model' of
the real situation.