I will not repeat many of the fine reviews already posted. What I will say is that "Sources of Powers" looks at how real experienced people make REAL decisions in the field as opposed to traditional research where decision making is researched via students as "lab rats" in unrealistic situations. You will learn about NDM (Naturalistic Decision Making)/RPD (Recognition Primed Model) as it can apply to the developement of decision support systems and command and control systems. DoD has used these concepts to develop collaborative and DSS applications that decision makers will actually use. If you will be involved in the development of DSS or collaborative type software then you should give this textbook a read. This book is very popular with DoD and as a reading assignment in several universities.
More comments on my views of the booK:
Gary Klein would be the first to say that some of his concepts are a work in process and NDM (Naturalistic Decision making) is not just one man or one concept such as RPM (Recognition-primed decision model). Klein begins the dialog on the nature of decision making and how it can be incorporated into decision support systems and knowledge based systems. I believe knowledge based applications will be the trend in the next ten years or so and lots of money will be wasted when one does not properly consider the cognitive issues involved in development.
Some may say that Gary is guilty of stating the obvious but all too often the obvious is ignored because...well it's obvious. Also, lab rats and college students are not necessarily what/who you need to study when looking at how experienced decision makers make decisions. NDM (naturalistic decision making) offers an alternative to the rational choice strategy (see Herbert A. Simon). In the rational choice strategy the decision maker:
1. Identifies the set of options
2. Identifies the ways of evaluating these options.
3. Weights each evaluation dimension.
4. Does the rating
5. Picks the options with the highest score.
Throughout the book Gary shows that the rational choice strategy is seldom used by experienced decision makers. One alternative to this framework is NDM and one instance of this is RPM. For those not versed in cognitive science, RPM may offer an easy to understand content validation on how experts make decisions:
* It appears to describe the decision strategy used most frequently by people with experience.
* It explains how people can use experience to make difficult decisions.
* It demonstrates that people can make effective decisions without using a rational choice strategy.
Can RPM's logic be incorporated into command and control and decision support systems? DoD has examples where that has been done.
I think the biggest issue is no decision model (good or bad) is brought into the design and left up to the IT developers and programmers who certainly do not have the decision skills to embed that knowledge. Too often the decision makers have been left out of the equation because it was thought to be more of an IT thing and the result is a failed information system. As Klein states:
"Too often software designers are not told what key decisions are that the system must help the operator or heuristics that the operator is likely to use. Left without any way to visualize the operator, designers do the best job they can to pack information onto screens so that it will all be there when needed."
Many users of DSS and KM have been victims of such a process of "packing/" Those that do use some decision model, often tend to select optimization models which may have their place but may not be relevant to the context and type of decision maker that will use the system. These types of optimization models tend to be more useful for junior decision makers but there can be a case made that optimization models could be used to bring experienced people out of a certain mind set.
Klein edited an earlier book written by various practitioners if you are interested in delving further but I think "Sources of Power" gives you a good overview of NDM. What I like about NDM is the fact that extensive work has been done with experienced decision makers. Decision making is messy and you can't just "study" it with student test subjects on campus in my opinion.
Decision making is a personal thing that is also influenced by context for example the emotional stress sometimes linked with decision making under crises. Gary Klein in a sense says that you can't ignore that emotion because decision making is personal and any IT support has to be in harmony with the decision maker(s). These questions should be asked and discussed and certainly NDM is but one concept in the vast world of decision making theory that goes beyond the basic decision model of Herbert A. Simon.
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