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California Management Review
California Management Review is a premier academic management journal published at UC Berkeley
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Article Information
The Three Faces of Bounded Reliability: Alfred Chandler and the Micro-Foundations of Management Theory
Kano, Liena , and Alain Verbeke
58
/
1
(
Fall
2015
):
97
-
122
Alfred Chandler, the celebrated business historian, provided detailed descriptions of the reasons for failed human commitments and the managerial tools needed to prevent/remediate such failings in the context of large business firms. Chandler’s historical narrative identifies three distinct "faces" of bounded reliability --opportunism, benevolent preference reversal, and identity-based discordance -- as the main drivers of commitment failure. Adopting bounded reliability (BRel) as a micro-foundation in management studies will raise the quality and relevance of scholarly recommendations to improve managerial decision making and action, because analysis of BRel challenges closely mirrors the real-world problems facing practicing managers.