创造财富-企业财务战略与决策[外文翻译].doc

本科毕业论文（设计） 外 文 翻 译 原文： Creating Wealth Corporate Financial Strategy and Decision Making Corporate Financial Strategic Planning Herbert Simon has written that there is a Gresham’s law of planning: “Programmed activity tends to drive out non programmed activity.” The decision to buy a new energy-saving piece of equipment is a lot easier to discuss and analyze than strategic investment decisions. In the case of the energy-saving equipment, cash flows can be estimated and the decision to buy or not to buy can be made based on well-known capital budgeting techniques. The basic capital budgeting techniques are “programmed activities” in Simon’s law. Strategy issues are a lot softer and a lot less satisfactory to write about and to read. However, it may well be that strategy issues are much more important, even if they are not fun to consider. Strategy leads a firm to enter the energy business. That is the first and most important decision. The firm might then have to value a prospective acquisition as a means of accelerating the entry into the industry, but without the strategy decision it would not be necessary to value the acquisition. All business decision making is based on abstractions from reality. We have to simplify in order to make decisions. We can delay decision making by insisting- on more information, but when the more information is obtained, there will still be more information that could be obtained if you were willing to defer action. Sooner or later one has to resist the opportunity to get more information, and one has to make the decision. Herbert Simon has said this best: Administrative theory is peculiarly the theory of intended and bounded rationality – of the behavior of human beings who satisfice because they have not the wits to maximize. And as additional explanation: Whereas economic man maximizes – selects the best alternative from among all those available to him, his cousin, administrative man, satisfices –looks for a course of action