Unit 1.Introduction of Behavioral science a.

Behavioral science concept and definition:

Behavioral science is concerned with the study of human and animal behavior. Scientists in this field look at individuals and their behavior along with the behavior of societies, groups, and cultures, as well as processes that can contribute to specific behaviors. There is a great deal of overlap between this field and the social sciences, which can sometimes lead to confusion. The social sciences tend to focus more on structural systems and cultures, while behavioral science tends to look at the reactions within and between organisms that dictate behavioral trends.
-A scientific discipline, such as sociology, anthropology, or psychology, in which the actions and reactions of humans and animals are studied through observational and experimental methods. - A science or branch of learning, as psychology or sociology that derives its concepts from observation of the behavior of living organisms. - Any of various scientific disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, or psychology, in which the actions and reactions of humans and animals are studied through observational and experimental methods.

Behavioral and social sciences are often grouped together in peoples minds. However, there is a difference in the focus of study between behavioral and social sciences. Social sciences seek to understand how individuals relate within a society, whereas behavioral sciences study the actions of human beings. There is an overlap between social and behavioral sciences that is evident in several academic disciplines. The main behavioral science disciplines include anthropology, psychology and sociology. Behavioral genetics is a relatively new field in behavioral sciences that has attracted a lot of attention in the past few years.

Social and Behavioral Sciences A considerable literature on individual behavior and public health has developed in the second half of the twentieth century. The general failure of public health to pick up and nurture the more macro social science perspectives to the same degree has limited the full potential of the impact of the social and behavioral sciences on public health, particularly because the historical roots of public health in the latter half of the nineteenth century included a strong social structural viewpoint. Since that time, the theoretical development of economics, political science, sociology, and anthropology has accelerated, but it was often not brought to bear on contemporary public health issues because these issues were often defined in terms of the characteristics of individuals rather than as characteristics of social structure. The argument is, then, that public health picked up the wrong end of the

social science stickthe individual (micro) end rather than the sociocultural (macro) end. This assertion is supported by any perusal of public health journals or literature on social and behavioral science in public health in the second half of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, as the end of the twentieth century in public health witnessed increasing concern with social concepts such as social inequity, inequality, and community interventions, the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, economics, and political science had a more important role in public health, for the determinants of health were being defined in terms of a social and behavioral perspective. For example, many individual behaviors were recognized as risk factors for poor health, but were also seen as embedded in a wider social context. In addition, a social scienceinformed healthful public policy was seen by many as a key to the development of public health strategies to improve health.

Categories of behavioural sciences

Behavioural sciences include two broad categories: neural Information sciences and social Relational sciences. Information processing sciences deals with information processing of stimuli from the social environment by cognitive entities in order to engage in decision making, social judgment and social perception for individual functioning and survival of organism in a social environment. These include psychology, cognitive science, psychobiology, neural networks, social cognition, social psychology, semantic networks, ethology and social neuroscience. On the other hand, Relational sciences deal with relationships, interaction, communication networks, associations and relational strategies or dynamics between organisms or cognitive entities in a social system. These include fields like sociological social psychology, social networks, dynamic network analysis, agent-based model .

Difference between behavioral sciences and social sciences

The term behavioral sciences are often confused with the term social sciences. Though these two broad areas are interrelated and study systematic processes of behavior, they differ on their level of scientific analysis of various dimensions of behaviour. Behavioural sciences abstract empirical data to investigate the decision processes and communication strategies within and between organisms in a social system. This involves fields like psychology, social neuroscience and cognitive science. In contrast, social sciences provide a perceptive framework to study the processes of a social system through impacts of social organisation on structural adjustment of the individual and of groups. They typically include fields like sociology, economics, public health, anthropology, demography and political science.

Obviously, however, many subfields of these disciplines cross the boundaries of behavioral and social. For example, political psychology and behavioral economics use behavioral approaches, despite the predominant focus on systemic and institutional factors in the broader fields of political science and economics.

The Social and Behavioral Science DisciplinesThe social sciences are concerned with the study of human society and with the relationship of individuals in, and to, society. The chief academic disciplines of the social sciences are anthropology, economics, history, political science, and sociology. The behavioral sciences, particularly psychology, are concerned with the study of the actions of humans and animals. The key effort of the behavioral sciences is to understand, predict, and influence behavior. The chief academic disciplines of the behavioral sciences are anthropology, psychology, and sociology, with the distinction between social and behavioral science often blurred when these disciplines are applied in public health research and practice, particularly in schools of public health and governmental agencies. Many, if not most, public health approaches are problem focused and lead to a multidiscipline solution encompassing several social and behavioral science disciplines and combinations of them (such as social psychology), in addition to other public health disciplines such as epidemiology and biostatistics. Anthropology. Anthropology is a broad social science concerned with the study of humans from a social, biological and cultural perspective. Historically it is a Westernbased social science with roots in Europe and North America. It includes two broad areas of physical and sociocultural anthropology; both are relevant to public health. Physical anthropology divides into two areas, one related to tracing human evolution and the study of primates, and the other concerned with contemporary human characteristics stemming from the mixture of genetic adaptations and culture. Medical anthropologists with this perspective are often concerned with the relationships between culture, illness, health, and nutrition. Sociocultural anthropology is concerned with broad aspects of the adaptation of humans to their cultures with social organization, language, ethnographic details, and, in general, the understanding of culturally mitigated patterns of behavior. In recent decades this perspective has taken a more ecologically focused view of the human species. From a public health perspective, this approach to anthropology is probably most salient in terms of the methodological approaches used by anthropologists. They have a critical concern with understanding communities through participant observation. Indeed, participation is probably the key concept linking modern-day anthropological approaches to twentieth-century concepts of public health community interventions. Although the methodology of rapport-based structured interviews and observation is a highly developed methodology among anthropologists, it has had limited application in public health. More recent efforts in public health to address issues of inequity at the community level have created more attention to anthropological approaches.

-cross-culture analaysis -morale and productivity -change and development of organisation -culture of organization -stress management

Psychology. Psychology is probably the most common disciplinary background found in the application of the social and behavioral sciences to public health. Modern psychology is a large field that encompasses physiological psychology, concerned with the nervous and circulatory systems, as well as social psychology, and concerned with the behavior of individuals as influenced by social stimuli. In general, psychology is concerned with the relationship of living organisms to their environment. In addition to studies focused on physiological mechanisms, psychology is concerned with the broad area of human cognition, including learning, memory, and concept formation. The subfield of abnormal psychology is concerned with mental disorders, ranging from psychoses to neuroses. The subfield of clinical psychology offers direct patient-care mechanisms to treat mental problems in individuals. Thus the application of psychological approaches to health is quite apparent. However, the most salient branch of psychology for public health practice, and particularly for the task of understanding the determinants of health, is probably social psychology. A major focus of social psychology is on attitudes, opinions, and behaviors. Thus, there is an emphasis on understanding how groups and individuals interact with one another. The degree to which many interactions are easy or difficult can play a major role in determining the stability of groups and individuals. Therefore, broad concepts such as stress, social cohesion, peer influence, civic trust, and others derive strong theoretical and research support from social psychology. -personality,persception -attitude and values -individual decision making -Learning -motivation -job satisfaction

-social,culture and other factor -work stress Sociology. Sociology is perhaps the broadest of the social science fields applied to public health. It is also characterized by being eclectic in its borrowing from the other social sciences. Thus, sociology is also concerned with organizations, economics, and political issues, as well as individual behaviors in relation to the broader social milieu. A key concept in sociology, however, is an emphasis on society rather than the individual. The individual is viewed as an actor within a larger social process. This distinguishes the field from psychology. Thus the emphasis is on units of analysis at the collective level such as the family, the group, the neighborhood, the city, the organization, the state, and the world. Sociology is concerned with how the social fabric or social structure is maintained, and how social processes, such as conflict and resolution, relate to the maintenance and change of social structures. A sociologist studies processes that create, maintain, and sustain a social system, such as a health care system in a country. The scientific component of this study would be the concern with the processes regulating and shaping the health care system. Sociology assumes that social structure and social processes are very complex. -group level -group and teams -leadership -communication -conflict ,dynamics of change -formal and informal organization -status and role Economics. Economics is perhaps the oldest of the social sciences, with its concern with wealth and poverty, trade and industry. However, current economic thinking generally dates from the last three centuries and is associated with the great names in economic thinking, such as Adam Smith, Robert Malthus, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx. Present-day economics is an advanced study of production, employment, exchange, and consumption driven by sophisticated mathematical models. Basically, the field breaks into two distinctive areas: microeconomics and macroeconomics. Microeconomics is largely concerned with issues such as competitive markets, wage rates, and profit margins. Macroeconomics deals with broader issues, such as national income, employment, and economic systems. The relationship between economics and health is obvious because in developed countries the percentage of gross national product consumed by the health care industry is significant, generally ranging from 5 to 15

percent of the gross national product. In the poorer countries, the cost of disease to the overall economy can prohibit the sound economic development of the country. In recent years there has been a concern with both the global economic burden of disease as well as with investment in health. That poverty is highly related to poor public health is a widely accepted tenet of modernday thinking in public health. However, economic systems ranging from free enterprise through liberal socialism and communism offer quite differing alternatives to the reduction of poverty and the distribution of economic resources.

Political science
Political science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government, and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior. Political scientists "see themselves engaged in revealing the relationships underlying political events and conditions, and from these revelations they attempt to construct general principles about the way the world of politics works." Political science intersects with other fields; including economics, law, sociology, history, anthropology, public administration, public policy, national politics, international relations, comparative politics, psychology, political organization, and political theory. Although it became to be known as political science in the 19th century, when all the social sciences were established, political science has ancient roots; indeed, it originated almost 2,500 years ago with the works of Plato and Aristotle. Political science is commonly divided into five distinct sub-disciplines which together constitute the field:

political theory comparative politics public administration international relations public law

Political scientists study matters concerning the allocation and transfer of power in decision making, the roles and systems of governance including governments and international organizations, political behavior and public policies. They measure the success of governance and specific policies by examining many factors, including stability, justice, material wealth, and peace. Some political scientists seek to advance positive (attempt to describe how things are, as opposed to how they should be) theses by analyzing politics. Others advance normative theses, by making specific policy recommendations. Political psychology aims to understand interdependent relationships between individuals and contexts that are influenced by beliefs, motivation, perception, cognition, information processing, learning strategies, socialization and attitude formation. Political psychological theory and approaches have been applied in many contexts such as:

leadership role; domestic and foreign policy making; behavior in ethnic violence, war and genocide; group dynamics and conflict; racist behavior; voting attitudes and motivation; voting and the role of the media; nationalism; and political extremism. [1] In essence political psychologists study the foundations, dynamics, and outcomes of political behavior using cognitive and social explanations. -organisational power -politics -conflicts -coalitions

History
History. Historical studies offer yet another social science approach to understanding the relationship between society and health. Important insights have been gained through the study of health conditions in social and political context through time. Analysis of societal responses to major public health threats in the past, and the consequences of different approaches at critical periods in history offers lessons for current day and future planning. For example, Barnes (1995) account of competing social constructions of tuberculosis in 19th century France illuminates the political forces behind societal response to disease. Another example is found in Rushings (1995) analysis of societal reactions to major epidemics over the centuries, such as the bubonic plague of the middle Ages, cholera epidemics in the 19th century, and the AIDS epidemic of the late 20 th Century. Using evidence from historical accounts and the well-chronicled recent epidemic, he finds parallels in collective behavior and social response to severe, largescale threats. Finally, we have much to learn from the contrasting ways that societies have dealt with the needs of their most vulnerable groups throughout history. Presumably every generation, since the beginning of human existence, somehow passed on its stock of values, traditions, methods and skills to the next generation. The passing on of culture is also known as enculturation and the learning of social values and behaviours is socialization. The history of the curricula of such education reflects history itself, the history of knowledge, beliefs, skills and cultures of humanity. As the customs and knowledge of ancient civilizations became more complex, many skills were passed down from a person skilled at the job - for example in animal husbandry, farming, fishing, food preparation, construction, and military skills. Oral traditions were central in societies without written texts. Literacy in preindustrial societies was associated with civil administration, law, long distance trade or commerce, and religion. A formal schooling in literacy was provided to an elite group either at religious institutions or at the palaces of the rich and powerful. Providing literacy to most children has been a development of the last 150 or 200 years, or even last 50 years in some Third World countries. Schools for the young have historically been supplemented with advanced training, especially in Europe and China,

for priests, bureaucrats and businessmen. For most craftsmen skills were learned during an apprenticeshipas for example most lawyers and physicians before the mid-19th century The Social and Behavioral Sciences Working Together Many social and behavioral scientists who work in public health have strong, disciplinary-based, undergraduate and graduate training in one of the social sciences. However, the practice of academic and governmental public health involves disciplinary bases that are seldom as narrow as they would be in traditional, university-based academic departments. Indeed, in many government institutions of public health such discipline-trained social scientists may be simply referred to as health scientists or even as social epidemiologists. Public health practice is largely problem-focused, and whatever disciplinary base is appropriate to the problem will be used. Thus, it would not be uncommon for a person trained as a psychologist to be involved with a program addressed at community change or for an anthropologist to be involved with individual behavioral change. Nonetheless, all of the social and behavioral sciences share a commonality in approach to public health that differs from that of the biomedical approach. Disease is usually seen as a distal outcome, the focus being on those social and behavioral processes that prevent and reduce disease in people. Generally, the social sciences take a view that health and sickness are only one part of people's lifestyle. The social and behavioral sciences have varied and broad-based methodologies. Discussions of methodological approaches to knowledge attainment are at the heart of many discipline-based discussions. Perhaps the greatest ongoing debate is that over the role of qualitative and quantitative approaches to understanding. Many researchers and practitioners in public health consider data to be the sine qua non of public health. Often data are perceived as being quantitative and numerate. The social and behavioral sciences take a much broader view of what data is. Data can be personal accounts and stories as well as statistical presentations. Nonetheless, the rigor underpinning the appropriate collection of good data applies to both the quantitative and qualitative approaches. There is a strong appreciation that many quasiscientific cognitive ideas, such as race, poverty, or trust, cannot simply be quantified and understood numerically, yet still play a key role in determining health outcomes.

Behavioral science draws from a number of different fields and theories including industrial psychology, organizational psychology, industrial sociology, communication, cultural anthropology, administrative theory, organizational behavior, and political science. Behavioral science uses research and the scientific method to determine and understand behavior in the workplace. Many of the theories in the behavioral perspective are included in the behavioral science approach to management. For example, the Hawthorne studies used the scientific method and are considered to be a part of the behavioral science approach. An additional component of the behavioral science approach is determining how people process stimuli in their environment. This field is called information processing science and deals with

the processing of stimuli from the social environment by cognitive entities in order to engage in decision making, social judgment, and social perception. The field is particularly concerned with information processing as it relates to individual functioning and the survival of an organism in a social environment. Behavioral sciences also include relational sciences that deal with relationships, interaction, communication networks, associations, and relational strategies or dynamics between organisms or cognitive entities in a social system (Figure 0). The emphasis on using quantitative data and qualitative research methods to determine how people process information and understand social relationships is important to helping managers better understand the proven methods for increasing employee motivation and employee productivity. The behavioral science approach and the myriad of fields it encompasses is the most common study of management science today. One application of the behavioral science approach can be seen in the field of organizational development. Organizational development is an ongoing, systematic process of implementing effective organizational change. Organizational development is considered as both a field of applied behavioral science that focuses on understanding and managing organizational change and as a field of scientific study and inquiry. It uses components of behavioral sciences and studies in the fields of sociology, psychology, and theories of motivation, learning, and personality to implement effective organizational change and aid in the development of employees.

b.Applied Areas Education

Educational psychology is the study of how humans learn in educational settings, the effectiveness of educational interventions, the psychology of teaching, and the social psychology of schools as organizations. Educational psychology is concerned with how students learn and develop, often focusing on subgroups such as gifted children and those subject to specific disabilities. Researchers and theorists are likely to be identified in the US and Canada as educational psychologists, whereas practitioners in schools or schoolrelated settings are identified as school psychologists. This distinction is, however, not made in the UK, where the generic term for practitioners is "educational psychologist." Educational psychology can in part be understood through its relationship with other disciplines. It is informed primarily by psychology, bearing a relationship to that discipline analogous to the relationship between medicine and biology. Educational psychology in turn informs a wide range of specialities within educational studies, including instructional design, educational technology, curriculum development, organizational learning, special education and classroom management. Educational psychology both draws from and contributes to cognitive science and the learning sciences. In universities, departments of educational psychology are usually housed within faculties of education, possibly accounting for the lack of representation of educational psychology content in introductory psychology textbooks

To understand the characteristics of learners in childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age, educational psychology develops and applies theories of human development. Often represented as stages through which people pass as they mature, developmental theories describe changes in mental abilities (cognition), social roles, moral reasoning, and beliefs about the nature of knowledge. Each person has an individual profile of characteristics, abilities and challenges that result from predisposition, learning and development. This manifest as individual differences in intelligence, creativity, cognitive style, motivation and the capacity to process information, communicate, and relate to others. The most prevalent disabilities found among school age children are attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), learning disability, dyslexia, and speech disorder. Less common disabilities include mental retardation, hearing impairment, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and blindness.

Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental disorders. These include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities. Psychiatric assessment typically starts with a mental status examination and the compilation of a case history. Psychological tests and physical examinations may be conducted, including on occasion the use of neuroimaging or other neurophysiological techniques.The combined treatment of psychoactive medication and psychotherapy has become the most common mode of psychiatric treatment in current practice, but current practice also includes widely ranging variety of other modalities. Treatment may be delivered on an inpatient or outpatient basis, depending on the severity of functional impairment or on other aspects of the disorder in question. Research and treatment within psychiatry as a whole are conducted on an interdisciplinary basis, sourcing an array of sub-specialties and theoretical approaches. Psychiatry refers to a field of medicine focused specifically on the mind, aiming to study, prevent, and treat mental disorders in humans. It has been described as an intermediary between the world from a social context and the world from the perspective of those who are mentally ill. Those who specialize in psychiatry are different than most other mental health professionals and physicians in that they must be familiar with both the social and biological sciences. The discipline is interested in the operations of different organs and body systems as classified by the patient's subjective experiences and the objective physiology of the patient. Psychiatry exists to treat mental disorders which are conventionally divided into three very general categories: mental illness, severe learning disability, and personality disorder. While the focus of psychiatry has changed little throughout time, the diagnostic and treatment processes have evolved dramatically and

continue to do so. Since the late 20th century, the field of psychiatry has continued to become more biological and less conceptually isolated from the field of medicine.

Marketing:
Marketing is the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers. It is a critical business function for attracting customers. From a societal point of view, marketing is the link between a societys material requirements and its economic patterns of response. Marketing satisfies these needs and wants through exchange processes and building long term relationships. The process of communicating the value of a product or service through positioning to customers. Marketing can be looked at as an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, delivering and communicating value to customers, and managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organisation and its shareholders. Marketing is the science of choosing target markets through market analysis and market segmentation, as well as understanding consumer buying behavior and providing superior customer value. There are five competing concepts under which organizations can choose to operate their business; the production concept, the product concept, the selling concept, the marketing concept, and the holistic marketing concept. The four components of holistic marketing are relationship marketing, internal marketing, integrated marketing, and socially responsive marketing. The set of engagements necessary for successful marketing management includes, capturing marketing insights, connecting with customers, building strong brands, shaping the market offerings, delivering and communicating value, creating long-term growth, and developing marketing strategies and plans. Consumer Behavior provides the knowledge and skills necessary to perform consumer analyses that can be used for understanding markets and developing effective marketing strategies. The authors have developed what they call the Wheel of Consumer Analysis, which is a tool to help the reader understand how consumer affect and cognition, consumer behavior, consumer environment, and marketing strategy interact. The wheel is a powerful tool for analyzing consumer behavior and can be used to understand consumers and to guide the development of effective marketing strategies.

Management:
Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Resourcing encompasses the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and natural resources.

Since organizations can be viewed as systems, management can also be defined as human action, including design, to facilitate the production of useful outcomes from a system. This view opens the opportunity to 'manage' oneself, a prerequisite to attempting to manage others.

Organizational behavior management (Applied Behavior Analysis) (OBM) is an important aspect of management which applies psychological principles of organizational behavior and the experimental analysis of behavior to organizations to improve individual and group performance and worker safety. The areas of application may include: systems analysis, management, training, and performance improvement. OBM is similar to human resource management, with more emphasis on applied behavior analysis and systems-level focus. OBM interventions have been varied and include working with therapists on increasing billable hours to increasing productivity in Fortune 500 companies to creating effective pay systems. OBM takes principles from many fields, including behavioral systems analysis and performance management, although there is some debate as to whether taking principles from fields outside of behavior analysis meshes within the definition of OBM.Related fields include behavior-based safety and behavioral engineering.

Administration:
The administration of a business is interchangeable with the performance or management of business operations, maybe including important decision making. Thus it is likely to include the efficient organization of people and other resources so as to direct activities toward common goals and objectives. The word is derived from the Middle English word administracioun, which is in turn derived from the French administration, itself derived from the Latin administratio a compounding of ad ("to") and ministrare ("give service"). Administrator can occasionally serve as the title of the general manager or company secretary who reports to a corporate board of directors. This title is archaic, but, in many enterprises, the general management function, including the associated Finance, Personnel and management information systems services, is what is meant by the term "administration". In some organizational analyses, management is viewed as a subset of administration, specifically associated with the technical and mundane elements within an organization's operation. It stands distinct from executive or strategic work.

Administrative functions Administrators, broadly speaking, engage in a common set of functions to meet the organization's goals. These "functions" of the administrator were described by Henri Fayol as "the 5 elements of administration" (in bold below).

Planning - is deciding in advance what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and who should do it. It maps the path from where the organization is to where it wants to be. The planning function involves establishing goals and arranging them in a logical order. Administrators engage in both short-range and long-range planning. Organizing - involves identifying responsibilities to be performed, grouping responsibilities into departments or divisions, and specifying organizational relationships. The purpose is to achieve coordinated effort among all the elements in the organization (Coordinating). Organizing must take into account delegation of authority and responsibility and span of control within supervisory units. Staffing - means filling job positions with the right people at the right time. It involves determining staffing needs, writing job descriptions, recruiting and screening people to fill the positions. Directing (Commanding) - is leading people in a manner that achieves the goals of the organization. This involves proper allocation of resources and providing an effective support system. Directing requires exceptional interpersonal skills and the ability to motivate people. One of the crucial issues in directing is to find the correct balance between emphasis on staff needs and emphasis on economic production. Controlling - is a function that evaluates quality in all areas and detects potential or actual deviations from the organization's plan. This ensures high-quality performance and satisfactory results while maintaining an orderly and problemfree environment. Controlling includes information management, measurement of performance, and institution of corrective actions. Budgeting - exempted from the list above, incorporates most of the administrative functions, beginning with the implementation of a budget plan through the application of budget controls.

Newer Fields: Game theory

Game theory is a study of strategic decision making. More formally, it is "the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decisionmakers." An alternative term suggested "as a more descriptive name for the discipline" is interactive decision theory. Game theory is mainly used in economics, political science, and psychology, as well as logic and biology. The subject first addressed zero-sum games, such that one person's gains exactly equal net losses of the other participant(s). Today, however, game theory applies to a wide range of class relations, and has developed into an umbrella term for the logical side of science, to include both human and non-humans, like computers. Classic uses include a sense of balance in numerous

games, where each person has found or developed a tactic that cannot successfully better his results, given the other approach. Modern game theory began with the idea regarding the existence of mixed-strategy equilibria in two-person zero-sum games and its proof by John von Neumann. Von Neumann's original proof used Brouwer's fixed-point theorem on continuous mappings into compact convex sets, which became a standard method in game theory and mathematical economics. His paper was followed by his 1944 book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, with Oskar Morgenstern, which considered cooperative games of several players. The second edition of this book provided an axiomatic theory of expected utility, which allowed mathematical statisticians and economists to treat decision-making under uncertainty. This theory was developed extensively in the 1950s by many scholars. Game theory was later explicitly applied to biology in the 1970s, although similar developments go back at least as far as the 1930s. Game theory has been widely recognized as an important tool in many fields. Eight game-theorists have won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, and John Maynard Smith was awarded the Crafoord Prize for his application of game theory to biology.

Decision theory:
Decision theory in economics, psychology, philosophy, mathematics, and statistics is concerned with identifying the values, uncertainties and other issues relevant in a given decision, its rationality, and the resulting optimal decision. It is closely related to the field of game theory as to interactions of agents with at least partially conflicting interests whose decisions affect each other. Most of decision theory is normative or prescriptive, i.e., it is concerned with identifying the best decision to take (in practice, there are situations in which "best" is not necessarily the maximal, optimum may also include values in addition to maximum, but within a specific or approximative range), assuming an ideal decision maker who is fully informed, able to compute with perfect accuracy, and fully rational. The practical application of this prescriptive approach (how people ought to make decisions) is called decision analysis, and aimed at finding tools, methodologies and software to help people make better decisions. The most systematic and comprehensive software tools developed in this way are called decision support systems.

Organisation theory:
Organizational theory is "the study of organizations for the benefit of identifying common themes for the purpose of solving problems, maximizing efficiency and productivity, and meeting the needs of stakeholders."organizational theory contains three subtopics: classical perspective, neoclassic perspective and environmental perspective. It complements the studies of organizational behavior and human resource studies.

Taylor identifies four inherent principles of the scientific management theory. 1. The creation of a scientific method of measurement that replaces the "rule-ofthumb" method 2. Emphasis placed on the training of workers by management 3. Co-operation between manager and workers to ensure the principles are being met 4. Equal Division of labour between managers and workers.

Information theory:
Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics, electrical engineering, bioinformatics, and computer science involving the quantification of information. Information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and communicating data. Since its inception it has broadened to find applications in many other areas, including statistical inference, natural language processing, cryptography, neurobiology, the evolution and function of molecular codes, model selection in ecology, thermal physics, quantum computing, plagiarism detection and other forms of data analysis. A key measure of information is entropy, which is usually expressed by the average number of bits needed to store or communicate one symbol in a message. Entropy quantifies the uncertainty involved in predicting the value of a random variable. For example, specifying the outcome of a fair coin flip (two equally likely outcomes) provides less information (lower entropy) than specifying the outcome from a roll of a die (six equally likely outcomes). Applications of fundamental topics of information theory include lossless data compression (e.g. ZIP files), lossy data compression (e.g. MP3s and JPGs), and channel coding (e.g. for Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)). The field is at the intersection of mathematics, statistics, computer science, physics, neurobiology, and electrical engineering. Its impact has been crucial to the success of the Voyager missions to deep space, the invention of the compact disc, the feasibility of mobile phones, the development of the Internet, the study of linguistics and of human perception, the understanding of black holes, and numerous other fields. Important sub-fields of information theory are source coding, channel coding, algorithmic complexity theory, algorithmic information theory, information-theoretic security, and measures of information. The main concepts of information theory can be grasped by considering the most widespread means of human communication: language. Two important aspects of a concise language are as follows: First, the most common words (e.g., "a", "the", "I") should be shorter than less common words (e.g., "roundabout", "generation", "mediocre",) so that sentences will not be too long. Such a tradeoff in word length is

analogous to data compression and is the essential aspect of source coding. Second, if part of a sentence is unheard or misheard due to noise e.g., a passing car the listener should still be able to glean the meaning of the underlying message. Such robustness is as essential for an electronic communication system as it is for a language; properly building such robustness into communications is done by channel coding. Source coding and channel coding are the fundamental concerns of information theory. Note that these concerns have nothing to do with the importance of messages. For example, a platitude such as "Thank you; come again" takes about as long to say or write as the urgent plea, "Call an ambulance!" while the latter may be more important and more meaningful in many contexts. Information theory, however, does not consider message importance or meaning, as these are matters of the quality of data rather than the quantity and readability of data, the latter of which is determined solely by probabilities. Information theory is generally considered to have been founded in 1948 by Claude Shannon in his seminal work, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication". The central paradigm of classical information theory is the engineering problem of the transmission of information over a noisy channel. The most fundamental results of this theory are Shannon's source coding theorem, which establishes that, on average, the number of bits needed to represent the result of an uncertain event is given by its entropy; and Shannon's noisy-channel coding theorem, which states that reliable communication is possible over noisy channels provided that the rate of communication is below a certain threshold, called the channel capacity. The channel capacity can be approached in practice by using appropriate encoding and decoding systems. Information theory is closely associated with a collection of pure and applied disciplines that have been investigated and reduced to engineering practice under a variety of rubrics throughout the world over the past half century or more: adaptive systems, anticipatory systems, artificial intelligence, complex systems, complexity science, cybernetics, informatics, machine learning, along with systems sciences of many descriptions. Information theory is a broad and deep mathematical theory, with equally broad and deep applications, amongst which is the vital field of coding theory. Coding theory is concerned with finding explicit methods, called codes, of increasing the efficiency and reducing the net error rate of data communication over a noisy channel to near the limit that Shannon proved is the maximum possible for that channel. These codes can be roughly subdivided into data compression (source coding) and errorcorrection (channel coding) techniques. In the latter case, it took many years to find the methods Shannon's work proved were possible. A third class of information theory codes are cryptographic algorithms (both codes and ciphers). Concepts, methods and results from coding theory and information theory are widely used in cryptography and cryptanalysis. See the article ban (information) for a historical application. Information theory is also used in information retrieval, intelligence gathering, gambling, statistics, and even in musical composition.

Communication theory:
Communication theory is a field of information and mathematics that studies the technical process of information and the human process of human communication. [ According to communication theorist Robert T. Craig in his essay 'Communication Theory as a Field' (1999), "despite the ancient roots and growing profusion of theories about communication," there is not a field of study that can be identified as 'communication theory'.

Elements of communication
Basic elements of communication made the object of study of the communication theory:

Source: Shannon calls it information source, which "produces a message or sequence of messages to be communicated to the receiving terminal ."Sender: Shannon calls it transmitter, which "operates on the message in some way to produce a signal suitable for transmission over the channel.[ In Aristotle it is the speaker (orator). Channel: For Shannon it is "merely the medium used to transmit the signal from transmitter to receiver. Receiver: For Shannon the receiver "performs the inverse operation of that done by the transmitter, reconstructing the message from the signal." Destination: For Shannon destination is "the person (or thing) for whom the message is intended". Message: from Latin mittere, "to send". A concept, information, communication or statement that is sent in a verbal, written, recorded or visual form to the recipient. Feedback Entropic elements, positive and negative

Cybernetics:
Cybernetics is a transdisciplinary approach for exploring regulatory systems, their structures, constraints, and possibilities. Cybernetics is relevant to the study of systems, such as mechanical, physical, biological, cognitive, and social systems. Cybernetics is applicable when a system being analyzed is involved in a closed signaling loop; that is, where action by the system generates some change in its environment and that change is reflected in that system in some manner (feedback) that triggers a system change, originally referred to as a "circular causal" relationship. Some say this is necessary to a cybernetic perspective. System dynamics, a related field, originated with applications of electrical engineering control theory to other kinds of simulation models (especially business systems) by Jay Forrester at MIT in the 1950s.

Concepts studied by cyberneticists (or, as some prefer, cyberneticians) include, but are not limited to: learning, cognition, adaption, social control, emergence, communication, efficiency, efficacy, and connectivity. These concepts are studied by other subjects such as engineering and biology, but in cybernetics these are abstracted from the context of the individual organism or device. Fields of study which have influenced or been influenced by cybernetics include game theory, system theory (a mathematical counterpart to cybernetics), perceptual control theory, sociology, psychology (especially neuropsychology, behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology), philosophy, architecture, and organizational theory.

Definitions
Cybernetics has been defined in a variety of ways, by a variety of people, from a variety of disciplines. The Larry Richards Reader includes a list of definitions:

"The only branch of science and math concerned with the 'Limitations' of Evolution"-Taylor Kirkland "Science concerned with the study of systems of any nature which are capable of receiving, storing and processing information so as to use it for control."A. N. Kolmogorov "The art of securing efficient operation."L. Couffignal "'The art of steersmanship': deals with all forms of behavior in so far as they are regular, or determinate, or reproducible: stands to the real machine -- electronic, mechanical, neural, or economic -- much as geometry stands to real object in our terrestrial space; offers a method for the scientific treatment of the system in which complexity is outstanding and too important to be ignored."W. Ross Ashby "A branch of mathematics dealing with problems of control, recursiveness, and information, focuses on forms and the patterns that connect."Gregory Bateson "The art of effective organization."Stafford Beer "The art and science of manipulating defensible metaphors."Gordon Pask "The art of creating equilibrium in a world of constraints and possibilities." Ernst von Glasersfeld "The science and art of understanding."Humberto Maturana "The ability to cure all temporary truth of eternal triteness."Herbert Brun

"The science and art of the understanding of understanding."Rodney E. Donaldson "A way of thinking about ways of thinking of which it is one."Larry Richards "The art of interaction in dynamic networks." - Roy Ascott