Showing papers on "Rationality published in 1995"

Emotion in the Workplace: A Reappraisal

Abstract: Although the experience of work is saturated with emotion, research has generally neglected the impact of everyday emotions on organizational life. Further, organizational scholars and practitioners frequently appear to assume that emotionality is the antithesis of rationality and, thus, frequently hold a pejorative view of emotion. This has led to four institutionalized mechanisms for regulating the experience and expression of emotion in the workplace: (1) neutralizing, (2) buffering, (3) prescribing, and (4) normalizing emotion. In contrast to this perspective, we argue that emotionality and rationality are interpenetrated, emotions are an integral and inseparable part of organizational life, and emotions are often functional for the organization. This argument is illustrated by applications to motivation, leadership, and group dynamics.

Social Norms and Social Roles

Abstract: This essay challenges some widely held understandings about rationality and choice, and uses that challenge to develop some conclusions about the appropriate domain of law. In particular, it suggests that many well-known anomalies in individual behavior are best explained by reference to social norms and to the fact that people feel shame when they violate those norms. Hence, there is no simple contrast between "rationality" and social norms. Individual rationality is a function of social norms. It follows that social states are often more fragile than might be supposed, because they depend on social norms to which people may not have much allegiance. Norm entrepreneurs -- people interested in changing social norms -- can exploit this fact; if successful, they produce what norm bandwagons and norm cascades. Collective action might be necessary to solve some unusual collective action problems posed by existing norms. And for many purposes, it would be best to dispense with the idea of "preferences," despite the pervasiveness of that idea in positive social science and in arguments about the appropriate domains of law.

The Business of Talk: Organizations in Action

Abstract: Preface and Acknowledgements. Introduction. 1. Talk and Organization. 2. Organizations in Action. 3. Talk as Social Action. 4. The Interaction Order of Organizations. 5. Conversational Procedures and Organizational Practices. 6. Information, Interaction and Institution. 7. Organizational Agendas. 8. Local Logic and Organizational Rationality. 9. The Business of Talk. Appendix I: Notes on Transcription Conventions. Bibliography. . Index.

Opening up Decision Making: The View from the Black Stool

Abstract: Set on its current course thirty years ago by Herbert Simon's notions of bounded rationality and sequential stages, the research literature of organizational decision making is claimed in this paper to have suffered from three major limitations labeled reification, dehumanization, and isolation. In particular, it has been stuck along a continuum between the cerebral rationality of the stage theories at one end and the apparent irrationality of the theory of organized anarchies at the other. This paper seeks to open up decision making in three respects. First, the concept of “decision” is opened up to the ambiguities that surround the relationship between commitment and action. Second, the decision maker is opened up to history and experience, to affect and inspiration, and especially to the critical role of insight in transcending the bounds of cerebral rationality. Third, the process of decision making is opened up to a host of dynamic linkages, so that isolated traces of single decisions come to be seen as interwoven networks of issues. The paper concludes with a plea to open up research itself to the development of richer theory on these important processes.

Information Systems Development and Data Modeling: Conceptual and Philosophical Foundations

Abstract: Data modelling was hypothesised to be the salvation of an organisation's data problems. This book aims to analyse the problems encountered and to present a comparative philosophical study of the various approaches. The authors explore the epistemology, ontology and rationality of each modelling approach, and describe the underlying assumptions embedded in them.

Cognitive Carpentry: A Blueprint for How to Build a Person

Abstract: From the Publisher: In his groundbreaking new book, John Pollock establishes an outpost at the crossroads where artificial intelligence meets philosophy. Specifically, he proposes a general theory of rationality and then describes its implementation in OSCAR, an architecture for an autonomous rational agent he claims is the "first AI system capable of performing reasoning that philosophers would regard as epistemically sophisticated." A sequel to Pollock's How to Build a Person, this volume builds upon that theoretical groundwork for the implementation of rationality through artificial intelligence. Pollock argues that progress in AI has stalled because of its creators' reliance upon unformulated intuitions about rationality. Instead, he bases the OSCAR architecture upon an explicit philosophical theory of rationality, encompassing principles of practical cognition, epistemic cognition, and defeasible reasoning. One of the results is the world's first automated defeasible reasoner capable of reasoning in a rich, logical environment. Underlying Pollock's thesis is a conviction that the tenets of artifical intelligence and those of philosophy can be complementary and mutually beneficial. And, while members of both camps have in recent years grown skeptical of the very possibility of "symbol processing" AI, Cognitive Carpentry establishes that such an approach to AI can be successful. A Bradford Book

Feminism, Citizenship, and Radical Democratic Politics

Abstract: Anglo-American feminists: postmodernism and essentialism. Obviously they are related since the so-called "postmoderns" are also presented as the main critics of essentialism, but it is better to distinguish them since some feminists who are sympathetic to postmodernism have lately come to the defense of essentialism.1 I consider that, in order to clarify the issues that are at stake in that debate, it is necessary to recognize that there is not such a thing as "postmodernism" understood as a coherent theoretical approach and that the frequent assimilation between poststructuralism and postmodernism can only lead to confusion. Which is not to say that we have not been witnessing through the twentieth century a progressive questioning of the dominant form of rationality and of the premises of the modes of thought characteristic of the Enlightenment. But this critique of universalism, humanism, and rationalism has come from many different quarters and it is far from being limited to the authors called "poststructuralists" or "postmodernists." From that point of view, all the innovative currents of this century-Heidegger and the post-Heideggerian philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer, the later Wittgenstein and the philosophy of language inspired by his work, psychoanalysis and the reading of Freud proposed by Lacan, American pragmatism-all have from diverse standpoints criticized the idea of a universal human nature, of a universal canon of rationality through which that human nature could be known as well as the traditional conception of truth. Therefore, if the term "postmodern" indicates such a critique of Enlightenment'suniversalism and rationalism, it must be acknowledged that it refers to the main currents of twentieth-century philosophy and there is no reason to single out poststructuralism as a special target. On the other side, if by "postmodernism" one wants to designate only the very specific form that such a critique takes in authors such as Lyotard and Baudrillard, there is absolutely no justification for putting in that category people like Derrida, Lacan, or Foucault, as has generally been the case. Too often a critique of a specific thesis of Lyotard or Baudrillard leads to sweeping conclusions about "the postmoderns" who by then include all the authors loosely connected with poststructuralism. This type of amalgamation is completely unhelpful when not clearly disingenuous.

Policy making and collective action: Defining coalitions within the advocacy coalition framework

Abstract: Research on policy communities, policy networks, and advocacy coalitions represents the most recent effort by policy scholars in North America and Europe to meaningfully describe and explain the complex, dynamic policy making processes of modern societies. While work in this tradition has been extraordinarily productive, issues of collective action have not been carefully addressed. Focusing on the advocacy coalitions (AC) framework developed by Sabatier (1988) and Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith (1993) as an example of a productive research program within the policy network tradition, this article (1) examines the potential of the AC framework, with its emphasis on beliefs, policy learning, and preference formation, to provide richer explanations of policy making processes than frameworks grounded exclusively in instrumental rationality; (2) suggests that paradoxically, however, the AC framework can more fully realize its potential by admitting the explanations of collective action from frameworks based on instrumental rationality; (3) incorporates within the AC framework accounts of how coalitions form and maintain themselves over time and of the types of strategies coalitions are likely to adopt to pursue their policy goals; and (4) derives falsifiable collective action hypotheses that can be empirically tested to determine whether incorporating theories of collective action within the AC framework represents a positive, rather than a degenerative, expansion of the AC framework.

Delusions: Investigations into the Psychology of Delusional Reasoning

Abstract: Concepts of delusion reasoning, rationality and delusions studies of reasoning in people with psychosis the assessment of delusions characteristics of delusional experience theories of the formation and maintenance of delusions reasoning in people with delusions reasoning about delusions towards a model of delusion formation. Appendices: reasoning about delusions - a structured interview notes on "Reasoning About Delusions - A Structured Interview" list of belief statements.

Fin De Siecle Social Theory: Relativism, Reduction, and the Problem of Reason

Abstract: In four interwoven studies, the book identifies the central dilemma that provokes contemporary social theory, and proposes a new way to resolve it. The dream of reason that marked the previous "fin de siecle" foundered in the face of the cataclysms of the 20th century, when war, revolution and totalitarianism came to be seen as themselves products of reason. In response, there emerged the profound scepticism about rationality that has so starkly defined the present fin de siecle. From Wittgenstein through Rorty and postmodernism, relativism rejects the very possibility of universal standards, while with both positivism and new-marxists like Bourdieu, reductionism claims that ideas simply reflect their social base. This book presents an argument which develops the alternative of a "neo-modernist" position which defends reason from within a culturally-centred perspective, while remaining committed to the goal of explaining, not merely interpreting, contemporary social life. On the basis of a sweeping reinterpretation of post-war society and its intellectuals, the author suggests that both antimodernism radicalism and postmodernist resignation are now in decline; a more democratic, less ethnocentric and more historically-contingent universalizing social theory may thus emerge. Developing in his first two studies a historical approach to the problem of "absent reason", Alexander moves, via a critique of Richard Rorty, to construct his case for "present reason". Finally, focusing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, he provides a sustained critical reflection on this influential thinker. The book is a tonic intervention in contemporary debates, showing how social and cultural theory can properly take the measure of the extraordinary times in which we live.

Rationality in Political Behavior

Abstract: Public choice theory borrows the basic assumptions of neoclassical economics about the nature of human rationality and applies them to the explanation and prediction of behavior in the political domain (Downs, 1957). An attractive, and seductive, feature of the theory is a very strong rationality assumption (maximization of subjective expected utility) that appears to permit a great deal of explanation and prediction without the painful necessity of first constructing an empirically based theory of human behavior, in particular, a theory of the nature and limits of human rationality. To an important extent, deductive reasoning from the theory's basic postulates of rationality substitutes for a great deal of costly empirical inquiry. The frequent use of public choice theory today in political science calls for an examination of the assumptions of rationality that the theory employs. This paper carries out such an examination. The analysis focuses on three issues: the nature of the rationality assumption, the orthogonality of rationality and selfishness, and the possibility of altruism. Our inquiry will lead us to the conclusion that human rationality is much more complex than it is portrayed to be in neoclassical and public choice theories, and that much less can be derived by deductive means from the (amended) assumptions of rationality than has been supposed by the exponents of those theories. An important corollary to this conclusion is that a veridical theory of public choice requires a solid foundation of empirical fact about the nature of human goals and about the processes that people use in reasoning from their actions to their values.

Belief revision, revised

Abstract: This paper studies properties of iterated revisions. First rationality result shows that in the AGM original framework the only revision operation that satisfies two resonable properties is the trivial revision. Then an altenative to the AGM framework for studying belief revision and probability postulates is proposed Iterated revisions are the objects of this formalism and the rationality postulates deal with properties of iterated revisions. A set of rationality postulates is presented closely related to the AGM postulates. A representation result shows that those postulate simply serious limitations to the way revisions cell dope with the Principle of Minimal change. Those postulates are not suitable for belief update but then consideration raises doubts about the adequacy of previous treatments of belief implate.

A Rational Reconstruction of the Compromise Effect: Using Market Data to Infer Utilities

Abstract: This article explores the possibility that consumers use market data to make inferences about product utilities The argument is made by means of an example based on the “compromise effect” found in extant experimental data This phenomenon is generally looked at as a manifestation of deviations from rationality in choice However, assuming full rationality, I describe a decision rule that is based on consumers' inferences about their personal valuation of alternatives from the portfolio of market offerings and some information about their own relative tastes Through a number of examples, I will argue that consumers often use this or similar decision rules to make inferences about utility I then show that the decision rule may generate compromise effects in experiments and that it may be sustainable The compromise effect could therefore be seen as preliminary evidence that consumers make such inferences

Concepts, Theories, and Rationality in the Biological Sciences the Second Pittsburgh-Konstanz Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, October 1-4, 1993

Abstract: Leading biologists and philosophers of biology discuss the basic theories and concepts of biology and their connections with ethics, economics, and psychology, providing a remarkably unified report on the state of the art in the philosophy of biology."

The sociology of money : economics, reason & contemporary society

Abstract: Preface. Introduction: On the Nature of Money. Part I:. 1. The Political Economy of Money. 2. Money and the State. 3. Cultural Aspects of the Mature Money Economy. 4. Money and the Social System. Part II:. 5. The Politics of International Monetary Integration. 6. Money in Postmodern Economics. 7. High Modernity, Rationality and Trust. 8. Monetary Analysis in Social Theory. Bibliography. Index.

The Foundations of Modern Democracy: Reflections on Jürgen Habermas

Abstract: Jurgen Habermas is one of the very few indisputably great moral and social thinkers of our time. We must situate our own thought with respect to his in order to know what it is we truly think, even when we then find that we must disagree. Over a number of years, Habermas has been working out a new conception of moral philosophy that he calls “discourse ethics” ( Diskursethik ). To some extent, this line of thought has developed at a very abstract level. Perhaps its most prominent feature has been the attempt to find the source of morality in a general principle of universalization that any agent must assume just by virtue of being a competent speaker with an understanding of the concept of reasons for action. It cannot be said that this attempt has met with evident success. Like all efforts to draw some fundamental set of moral obligations from the notion of practical rationality as such, Habermas's reflections at this level seem caught in a well-known but inescapable dilemma: either the idea Habermas proposes of practical rationality (or “communicative reason,” as he terms it) proves too weak to deliver any moral principles, or it is made to yield the desired conclusions only by virtue of moral content having been built into it from the outset (see Chapter 2). These exercises in “first philosophy” have been, however, only one part, and doubtlessly not the most deeply felt, of Habermas's project of a “discourse ethics.”

Language and the “Arts of Resistance”

Abstract: James Scott's latest book, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (1990), is certainly instructive for anthropologists and is studded with stimulating insights about power. Nevertheless, it is a deeply flawed work. The book was published several years ago and has been widely reviewed in journals of political science and sociology where the major issues of contention have been Scott's arguments about the nature of hegemony, the rationality of political action, and the logic of explaining revolutions (see, for example, Mitchell 1990 and Tilly 1991). However, the book is at least as much about the political significance of speech. It analyzes the situated nature of political expression, the relationship among speech, belief, and ideology in everyday power relations, and the political efficacy of talk. And it is exactly the language-related concepts introduced in the book-such as transcript and infrapolitics-that are having the widest influence, appearing with increasing frequency in writings about local politics and the political meaning of linguistic and cultural practices. For this reason, my aim is to discuss Scott's work for what it says and assumes about language and power. Ironically, it is just this aspect of the book that has not yet been seriously and critically reviewed. Domination and the Arts ofResistance ambitiously attempts to theorize the nature of communication across lines of economic power. Scott's broader aim is to "suggest how we might more successfully read, interpret, and understand the often fugitive political conduct of subordinate groups" (1990:xii). He explicitly rejects the currently common assumption in neo-Marxist literature, as well as in mainstream political science, that subordinate groups acquiesce to economic systems that are manifestly against their interests because they come to believe in a dominant ideology that legitimates or naturalizes the power of ruling elites. Whether in the simplistic form of "false consciousness" and cultural consensus, or in more subtle stories about cultural hegemony or "hegemonic incorporation," these theories look to ideological mechanisms for

Learning and Rationality in Economics

Abstract: What has the rational learning literature taught us?, L. Blume and D. Easley Savage-Bayesian models of economics, N. Kiefer and Y. Nyarko on adaptive learning in strategic games, R. Narimon and E. McGrattan adaptive learning and expectational stability, G. Evans and S. Honkapohja learning in oligopoly - theory, simulation and experimental evidence, A. Kirman speed of convergence of recursive least squares - learning with autoregressive moving-average perceptions increasing social returns, learning and bifurcation phenomena, G. Evans and S. Honkapohja bounded rationality and learning - procedural learning, M. Salmon learning and reputation in repeated games of incomplete information, D. Canning learning and social equilibrium in large populations, D. Canning evolution and rationality in competitive markets, L. Blume and D. Easley evolutionary selection and rational behaviour, A. Banerjee and J. Weibull equilibrium selection through adaption and experimentation, H. Young.

Strategic Management and the Exploration of Diversity

Abstract: The field of Strategic Management has had as a primary mission the analysis of diversity of performance among firms. While most research in the field has shared this common agenda, the approach taken has varied. Researchers have tended to be divided by the level of analysis with which they approach the issue and by their assumptions about the rationality of individuals and firms. This essay applies an evolutionary perspective to explore this question of diversity. It is suggested that such a perspective not only is an useful means with which to approach this question, but that as a by-product it may help to unify the strategy literature which has faced these methodological divisions based on level of analysis and assumptions of individual and firm rationality.

On transplanting human resource practices to China

Abstract: Argues that, whether referring to economic or bounded rationality, the notion of rationality is meaningful only in a specific cultural context. Proposes, by analogy, a culture‐driven approach for rationally managing the human resource function in a global environment. Shows how culture provides additional explanatory power for human resource management (HRM) practices – beyond what is a accounted for by political or economic structures – by comparing the USA with one of its major trading partners, Taiwan and with the People′s Republic of China (PRC), a country with which the USA has had a rather checkered relationship, on their commonly‐used practices of selection, reward systems, performance appraisal and participative management. Makes suggestions on how to reconcile cultural differences in transplanting HRM practices to China.

Beyond Rationality in Models of Choice

Abstract: There is increasing sociological interest in formal models of action driven by a calculus of expected utility. We believe these efforts to extend microeconomic models to extraeconomic exchange can benefit from specification of societal constraints on individual choice. One type of constraint locates the actor in an evolving network of social ties that limit opportunities for exchange. Another approach assumes that choices are influenced by unintended outcomes that operate behind the backs of the actors. Considerable progress has been made in the past two years incorporating social structure and unintended consequences into formal models based on individual choice optimization. We critically examine leading contributions to network exchange theory (part 1) and evolutionary models of collective action (part 2), and assess how these and related developments may shape the future of rational choice theory and its place within sociology.

From physics to metaphysics

Abstract: The book is drawn from the Tarner lectures, delivered in Cambridge in 1993. It is concerned with the ultimate nature of reality, and how this is revealed by modern physical theories such as relativity and quantum theory. The objectivity and rationality of science are defended against the views of relativists and social constructionists. It is claimed that modern physics gives us a tentative and fallible, but nevertheless rational, approach to the nature of physical reality. The role of subjectivity in science is examined in the fields of relativity theory, statistical mechanics and quantum theory, and recent claims of an essential role for human consciousness in physics are rejected. Prospects for a 'Theory of Everything' are considered, and the related question of how to assess scientific progress is carefully examined.