Neoclassical economists, however, generally shied away from interdisciplinary collaboration on human behavior. An exception to the rule were members of the Cowles Commission at the University of Chicago and protagonists of early consumers' research, such as George Katona. Having already advised the Ford Foundation on its program for the behavioral sciences in particular, Herbert A. Simon formulated a research agenda that resembled Schmölders's economic behavioral research. Having worked on theories of organization and administration, in 1955 Simon suggested to "substitute for 'economic man' or 'administrative man' a choosing organism of limited knowledge and ability. This organism's simplifications of the real world for purposes of choice introduce discrepancies between the simplified model and the reality; and these discrepancies, in turn, serve to explain many of the phenomena of organizational behavior." Simon wanted to develop a theoretical model of "rational behavior that is compatible with the access to information and the computational capacities that are actually possessed by organisms, including man, in the kinds of environments in which they exist."

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 331