Playing the Maintenance Game: How Mental Models Drive Organizational Decisions

Nature has equipped organisms with the ability to regenerate or repair themselves when damaged. If I cut myself, healing takes over without need of conscious direction. If I am hurt badly enough, the body's needs will make themselves known and tend to preempt voluntary activities. In this way, a balance between short-term interests (e.g., continuing to work or play) and long-term interests (staying healthy) is established on terms that derive from an evolutionary logic. Similarly, nature strikes a balance between parts and whole, for example, by diverting blood supply in cold weather to preserve the critical internal organs, although risking frostbite to the extremities. Business decisions about short-term and long-term interests, and local and global interests, have no evolutionary logic or built-in process to rely upon. Instead, these decisions are based on the limited understandings, rules of thumb, and traditional practices of organizational actors (March & Shapira, 1982). Research suggests that undue attention or decision weight may be given to the short term because the future is ambiguous or discounted (March, 1978; Loewenstein & Prelec, 1992). It is difficult for actors to understand the global and delayed consequences of local decisions and immediate actions (Senge & Sterman, 1989; Sterman, 1989a,b), and this is particularly difficult in tightly-coupled (Perrow, 1984) or highly-interdependent organizations.