Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions

The “power” referred to in the title is not an acknowledgement to the concepts of power‐as‐force in the organizational behavior and management literatures, but to power‐as‐analytical‐abilities from artificial intelligence. Curiously, the subtitle of this book is a more apt descriptor, as this volume chronicles an inductively developed, descriptive model of naturalistic decision making; a stark contrast to more prescriptive artificial intelligence and rational choice models. The goals of this book are twofold; one to make a case for naturalistic study of decision making, and two, to describe Klein’s recognition‐primed decision model (RPD). Often these two goals appear mixed; from the third chapter onward, naturalistic decision making and RPD are often used interchangeably. To some extent this is to be expected, but in the later chapters this conflation sometimes becomes distracting and limiting. But, overall, Klein succeeds in both making a cogent case for further naturalistic study of decision making and in promoting his RPD model as a logical starting point. In the earlier chapters the array of evidence marshaled is plentiful enough to give even the most ardent rational choice theorist pause. The descriptive study of decision making has, in recent years, documented an increasing divergence between what people do and what the prescriptive models dictate they should do. The fact that people who do not obey the rational prescriptions seem to do well overall, especially the everyday experts as documented in this volume makes Klein’s calls to redefine such icons as rationality and expertise appropriate extensions of the data.

The major strength of this book is that the best material is drawn from descriptions of Klein’s own work, rich with detail, quotations and vignettes drawn from studies of expert decision makers, including fire fighters, intensive care nurses, military officers, and chess masters in their natural environments. Because it is well documented and referenced, the reader can look up the technical reports and journal articles and read them along with sections of this book. In doing so, Klein’s engaging and highly readable style makes parts of this book appear more like a “behind‐the‐scenes” exposé bringing vividness to sometimes dry reports; and a useful exercise for teaching research methods. In constantly cutting between reviews of the literature, descriptions of his own studies, and “real life” examples such as the Vincennes incident, and other political and military challenges, Klein shows how naturalistic decision making, and his RPD model in particular account for phenomena that the more common rational choice and artificial intelligence/cognitive models cannot.

What makes this particular argument for naturalistic decision making so compelling are the studies of experts (not in the artificial intelligence sense of the term, but experts as everyday skilled practitioners) making real decisions under time pressure. The time pressure aspect is critical, because in case by case it is reiterated that under time pressure in conditions having serious consequences, experts do not behave in accordance to rational analytical prescriptions. That is, they do not assemble sets of options, evaluate each option according to some weighting/evaluative criteria, score the options and select the option with the highest score, or reason from analogies. Instead, they survey the situation quickly and pursue a reasonable course of action. How this is done, according to Klein, is by recognizing the situation as a prototype (hence the recognition‐primed model) and proceeding to solve the problem presented based on the individual’s perceptual skills and experience. As such, dissimilar to the often‐unstated assumptions of most cognitive models, the “action” in decision making is not occurring when the decision is made, but has already occurred in the individual’s past, or as Klein asserts: experience counts. To Klein’s experts, the analytical schemes, strategies, rules, computations, and the like that populate much of the decision‐making literature are simply irrelevant. In contrast to the mainstream models that posit decision making as a precursor to action, in this book decision making is action. This particular point is the volume’s most important insight; to understand the decisions people are making now, study their individual histories.

Ironically, this insight also leads to the book’s major shortcomings. Given Klein’s inductive approach to theorizing, he readily discards hypotheses and research tactics when the data demand (even to his great chagrin, as chronicled in the first three chapters). However, he is not as able to shed the metaphors and constructs of a rational/analytical cognitive psychology. The data gathered in this book clearly point to an account of decision making rooted in action rather than thought; however, Klein continually wrestles with the common cognitive constructs so that they conform to his data. Usually, such intellectual arm‐twisting occurs when he strays from his data, as can happen in an inductive scheme, and these sections make for the weakest parts of the book. For example, chapters 13 and 14 (“The power to read minds” and “The power of the team mind”, respectively) attempt to extend the RPD model to teams. However, with comparatively less data the chapters quickly become bogged down in personal anecdotes and digressions to largely extraneous literatures such as the development of metacognition in children. Perhaps the conceptual conundrum here is that although decision making is a psychological process, a psychological process is not necessarily synonymous with a mental process, but can also be synonymous with a social process. Up until chapters 13 and 14, decision making is described as an implicit social process; yet when faced with extending the model to an explicitly social situation, the analysis retreats to a miasma of the metaphors and minds of mental process.

In summary, Klein describes a remarkable array of work and builds a compelling case for naturalistic decision making. Although this is a book written by an expert, often raising issues directed at other decision‐making experts, it is well written and lively to the point that it is entirely appropriate for managers or even undergraduate students who are curious about these ideas. For decision researchers, Klein raises many serious challenges to traditional notions that should be considered carefully. It is clear that naturalistic decision making is ripe for research; whether the RPD model is the best way to proceed remains to be seen. But in deference to the eloquent ideas in this book, rather than comparing the RPD to other models, perhaps it may be better for researchers interested in naturalistic decision making to simply start researching, allowing the models and theories to emerge from the data which, after all, are the true experts.