Cyert and March

Richard Cyert and James March were described by Dierkes, Berthoin Antal, Child, and Nonaka (2001) as two of the “founding fathers” that introduced one of the disciplines that shaped thinking about organizational learning over the past decades.
Cyert and March spent their careers collaborating with scholars and theorists writing and revising theories related to the topic of organizational learning. The truly significant collaboration of their respective careers was their collaboration on their 1963 manuscript. The manuscript acknowledged the talents and works of over twenty scholars and theorists that contributed to the original manuscript. The Cyert and March manuscript outlines a behavioral theory of organizational learning through the development and research surrounding the decision making process of the firm.
Dierkes, et al. summarize the behavioral theory of organizational learning as follows:
:"Organizations learn by memorizing disturbances and reaction combinations according to decision variables. Standard operating procedures are referred to as the memory of the organization. By learning new combinations of external disturbances and internal decision-making rules, the organization increases its adaptability to differing environmental states. Any decision rule that leads to a non-preferred state at one point is less likely to be used in the future." (pp.66-67).
Perhaps the aforementioned summarization of Cyert and March’s behavioral theory of organizational learning is an over simplification of the theory. Perhaps it clears up the ambiguity that is evident in the variables in the testing processes of the theory development.
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