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Heuristics as tales from the field: the problem of scope

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Abstract

The scope of a heuristic decision making rule is a product of its fit to the context, the extension to which a heuristic can be applied successfully. To achieve effective outcomes, decision makers may use a few heuristics with large scopes or many with narrow scopes. Through a directed review of the literature combined with ethnographic research, this paper contributes to the debate on the problem of scope in three types of heuristics, namely, multipliers, thresholds, and calends. The scope of heuristic rules can be explored from different aspects, including the field in which a heuristic rule is applied and specific parameters that are used in a heuristic decision making process. The three types of heuristic rules we analyze were encountered in our ethnographic research, that was based on phenomenological interviews and observations. For these heuristics we discuss their scopes in through to the following organizing structures: (1) the exploration of the adaptive tool-box, (2) the role of ethnographic methodologies, and (3) the categorization of heuristics.

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  1. Department of Economics and Management, University of Florence, Via delle Pandette, 9, 50127, Florence, Italy

    Simone Guercini

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Correspondence to Simone Guercini.

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The author thanks participants to International Conference Heuristics in Organizations and Society, Turin, 13–14 December 2018, and to the track on Heuristics & Simple Rules: Decision-making under Uncertainty in Dealing with the Unexpected, at the EGOS Conference, Edinburgh, July 4–6 2019, for useful comments to previous draft of this paper.

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Guercini, S. Heuristics as tales from the field: the problem of scope. Mind Soc 18, 191–205 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11299-019-00221-4

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