[12]: 55–63 Beginning in 1936, Simon worked as a half-time research assistant and then as a full-time staff member at the International City Managers Association (ICMA).

[12]: 78–85  It was at Berkeley that he completed his University of Chicago Ph.D. thesis, which was approved by a committee consisting of Leonard D. White, C. Herman Pritchett, Clarence Ridley, and Charner Marquis Perry.

In his 1991 autobiography, Simon wrote that he found Barnard's book "wholly superior to the other administrative literature of the day and fully compatible with my preference for looking at management in decision-making terms".

Mitchell and Scott have noted similarities in Barnard's and Simon's concepts of authority, organizational equilibrium, and decision making.

[15]: 350 [17]: 266  In addition, Mitchell and Scott concluded that both Simon and Barnard believed that large organizations control individuals' behavior and manipulate their opinions.

[1]: 45 [10]: 253 In 1945, when Simon was at the Illinois Institute of Technology, he sent mimeographed copies of a preliminary version of the book (which was similar to his thesis) to about 200 people he thought might be interested in his work.

[1]: ix–xii [2]: xli–xliv [3]: xliiii–xlvi  In the Acknowledgements, Simon thanked Barnard for The Functions of the Executive, for "the extremely careful critical review he gave the preliminary version of this book", and for his foreword.

The chapter's second section on "Policy and Administration" discusses how the legislative and executive branches of government apply facts and values.

[1]: 52–59 [4]: 61–67 After considering how the ideas of means and ends relate to decision-making,[30]: 504  Simon distinguishes among "objectively", "subjectively", "consciously", "deliberately", "organizationally", and "personally" rational decisions.

[4]: 164 Chapters VII-X deal with four ways in which an organization can influence an individual's decisions: authority, communication, criterion of efficiency, and loyalties and organizational identification.

In Chapter VII, Simon discusses the nature of authority and how it is used in organizations: enforcing responsibility, obtaining decision-making expertise, and coordinating activity.

[1]: 172–173 [4]: 250–251  More generally (i.e., to include nonprofit organizations) the criterion causes "that choice of alternatives which produces the largest result for the given application of resources.

"[1]: 205 [4]: 284  Such organizational identification can be associated with decisions that are not optimal in terms of an organization's efficiency or adequacy ("the degree to which its goals have been reached").

The task of administration is so to design this environment that the individual will approach as close as practicable to rationality (judged in terms of the organization's goals) in his decisions.

[12]: 88 [19] Nevertheless, it became notable for the following innovations: The central concern of administrative theory is with the boundary between the rational and the nonrational aspects of human social behavior.

… In his epoch-making book Administrative Behavior, which first appeared in 1947 and which has been translated into nearly a dozen languages, as well as in a number of subsequent works, Simon describes the company as an adaptive system of physical, personal and social components, which are held together by a network of intercommunications and by the willingness of its members to co-operate and to work towards common goals.

… Nevertheless, it was reported that economists Albert Ando and William Baumol had "made little reference to Administrative Behavior" in arguing to the Nobel Prize Committee that Simon should win.

[19]: 138 Between 1955 and 1988, the book was translated into 12 languages: Chinese, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.