Approaches to Decision Making Theory

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...