Richard Cyert

Richard Michael Cyert (1921–1998) was an American economist and organizational theorist, best known as the co-author with James March of A Behavioral Theory of the Firm (1963). Cyert spent his career at Carnegie Mellon University, where he served as president from 1972 to 1990, and where he helped build the interdisciplinary environment that produced not only the behavioral theory of the firm but also foundational work in artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and operations research.

Cyert's contribution to organizational theory was to take Herbert Simon's concept of bounded rationality and apply it systematically to the firm. Where Simon had focused on individual decision-makers, Cyert — trained as an economist — asked what happens when bounded rationality is multiplied across an organization. The result was the coalition model, the concept of organizational slack, and the idea that firms satisfice rather than maximize.

Cyert's career illustrates a principle that the modern academy has largely forgotten: the most important advances often occur at the boundaries of disciplines, in institutions that deliberately resist departmentalization. The Carnegie School of economics and organizational theory — of which Cyert, March, and Simon were the central figures — is a case study in how proximity between economists, psychologists, and computer scientists can reshape all three fields.