Decision-Maker in Focus

The decision-maker is a crucial actor from the point of view of management accounting studies and management studies in general, but usually the human actor isn't dealt with as such at all. We suggest here that understanding the basics of the behaviour of decision-makers would be aided by a comprehensive view of the human actor. Our view covers both the way of functioning of the human brain and the philosophical dimensions of human actor. This aim in mind, we analyse and combine the so-called "holistic individual image" (by Lauri Rauhala), and a brain model called the "theater metaphor for conscious experience" (by Bernard J. Baars). On the basis of the resulting combined model, we assume the reader would understand better than before some basic characteristics of the decision-maker in a firm, in particular, in an accounting context. We assume that our results would be potentially useful for understanding human behaviour also in other fields of management studies, and indeed, in all disciplines dealing with human actor. In addition, the practitioners in these fields would also gain in knowing this model on human behaviour.

Autorentext

Pekka Pihlanto, Ph.D. (Econ.), Professor Emeritus of Management Accounting, and the former Head of the Department of Accounting and Finance at the Turku School of Economics, Turku, Finland. Professor Pihlantös research interests are behavioral accounting, accounting methodology and accounting philosophy.