Submitted by: Submitted by jennykl
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Words: 1091
Pages: 5
Category: Philosophy and Psychology
Date Submitted: 11/15/2015 06:30 PM
Laroche being prescriptive and descriptive
Laroche follows a prescriptive method in arguing for decision making theory. He
argues it is a social representation which will improve decision making. In his
abstract he writes “The paper argues that […] the concept of organizational action
should not be opposed to decision and decision-making. Decision and decisionmaking are best understood as social representations […]. As organization members
think and act in terms of decision-making, a theory of organizational action cannot
simply do without a theory of decision-making. “ showing clearly that he is
prescribing a certain way of looking upon decision-making. This is further
strengthened in the conclusion where he for example writes “This paper argued that
decision-making is best understood as a process of reality creation through
organization members’ representations of their own role and activity.”
The extent to which Laroche is prescriptive is debatable however. He acknowledges
descriptive factors such as when he claims in conclusion that “no theory of action
can develop without integrating the fact that, to a significant extent, organizational
members think and act in terms of decision-making... a relevant phenomenon for a
theory of action, not a marginal one”. He lists examples from empirical studies in
describing the decision-making process: “bureaucratic processes (e.g., Cyert and
March 1963, Carter 1971), political processes (e.g.. Bower 1970), psychological
processes (e.g., Janis 1972), etc. They constructed process typologies, both theoretic
(e.g., Allison 1971, Fredrickson 1983, Chaffee 1985, Schwenk 1988a) and empirical
(e.g, Nutt 1984, Shrivastava and Grant 1985, Hickson et al. 1986), and established the
ways these processes interact (e.g., Quinn 1980)”. By providing such lists he links the
‘universal’ model of ‘logic’ in decision-making theory as being inherently supported
by assumptions of ‘logic’. Decisions however are not always...