Usable Social Science

5. How Decisions Are Made

151 in one respect, this chapter is at the core of our efforts because it is the point at which issues of usability of social-science knowledge arise most directly. Decisions include assessment of problems, determining what to do about them, the psychological and social processes that go into making decisions, setting in place machinery and processes to make and implement decisions, and tracing their short- and long-term consequences. The subject matter of this chapter overlaps with material in chapter 2 (cognitive and related processes), chapter 3 (sanctions), chapter 4 (groups and related social forms), and chapter 6 (organizations ). We make specific note of these points of contact. a little SoCioloGy of KNoWleDGe in going through the literature on decisions over the past century, we notice that one type of decision has dominated scholarly and popular attention: the active and positive decision executed purposefully by an individual agent. This is a selective focus, because many other factors enter decisions and decision-making. We argue that this special tilt makes sense in the context of historically dominant american cultural values. to illustrate: intellectuals and social scientists have emphasized core themes in american cultural heritage. a classic account is Williams’s (1970 [1951]), in which he singled out “efficiency and practicality,” “science and secular rationality ,” and “materialism.” These emphases emanate from individualism, activism, and mastery of the environment, manifested dramatically in the mythology of the conquest of frontiers. Parsons (1951) placed individual achievement and 5 How Decisions are Made 152 Arenas of Usability instrumental activism at the center of american values. Riesman’s (1950) imagery of the “inner-directed” person struck the same chord. Though such characterizations differ in flavor, they impart an emphasis on the individual and the heroic. Dominant cultural images of captains of industry, robber barons (negative but still heroic), advancement and social mobility through self-determination and effort, the Horatio alger myth, and the ideal of surpassing one’s parents are all consistent with those values. Material rewards are also at the heart of these orientations . The downgrading of passivity, dependence, and fatalism is also consistent with the dominant imagery. Consonant with these cultural emphases are a number of tilts in the study of decision-making in the social sciences. We note the following: • a tilt toward focusing on effective decision-making, with market success, profits, successful policies, and employee morale as the criteria. its negative opposite, ineffective decisions, also receives attention. Beyond this effectiveineffective dimension, less attention is given to outright bad leadership— including callous, intemperate, exploitative, corrupt, insular, and evil leaders (Kellerman, 2004). • a tilt away from collective dimensions, even though group and team emphases have emerged dramatically as correctives, reflecting contemporary organizational and economic imperatives (see chapter 4). • a tilt toward the economic and psychological dimensions of decision-making. These are the domains of the disciplines of economics and psychology, with their respective analytic emphases on individual atomism and the person as the primary unit of analysis. These emphases—along with claims that these disciplines are more scientific by virtue of their quantitative and laboratory methods—lie at the core of sometimes disputed claims that economics and psychology are at the top of the status hierarchy of the social sciences. Sociology and anthropology, with their group and institutional emphases, do not resonate as comfortably with the individualism-activism cultural core. (Duesenberry once cited a tongue-in-cheek definition of economics and sociology: “economics is all about how people make choices. Sociology is all about why they don’t have any choices to make” [1960: 233].) • Within more specific traditions—for example, the study of entrepreneurship and the study of organizational decision-making—the dominant emphasis has been on business, corporate, market-oriented activity rather than the activities of public and voluntary agencies, though the latter have gained visibility recently. accordingly, the study of decision-making has been more the property of business, management, and administrative-science schools than of other academic units. as noted, business schools have to some degree “stolen” organizational studies from the academic disciplines. How Decisions Are Made 153 • a cultural tilt toward certain types of decisions. as noted, the dominant emphasis is on the active individual, and includes the imagery of choice, mastery, and conquest. The preoccupation with rationality of all sorts is consistent with these emphases. for what is rationality if it is not a formulation of mastery of information and a guarantee of correct decision-making...