DECIDING FOR RESPONSIBILITY AND LEGITIMATION - ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATIONS OF ORGANIZATIONAL DECISION-MAKING

Standard prescriptive theories of decision-making and the use of information for making decisions in organizations presume that decisions serve the purpose of choice. In this article it is argued that organizational decisions sometimes play one or more of three other roles: mobilizing organizational action, distributing responsibility or providing legitimacy. Different roles imply different designs of decision processes, different usages of information, different costs and different needs for making decisions at all. The degree of rationality in decision processes tends to vary according to the roles adopted. High degrees of rationality can be interpreted as attempts to prevent action, evade responsibility or support organizational legitimacy in a complex environment. © 1990.