212
Organization and Decision: Implications for Organization Theory

Abstract Submissions Closed

Thursday, 25 February 2021: 10:45-12:15
Location:

RC17 Sociology of Organization (host committee)

Language: English

Session Type: Oral


Decisions are typically treated as cognitive events, i.e. as individual choices between alternative courses of action. This mere psychological understanding of decisions is currently the dominating view in sociology (Bruch & Feinberg 2017) and organization studies (Luhman & Cunliffe 2013). Accordingly, scholars typically concentrate on how to influence these psychological choices and how these in turn affect social processes. However, in recent years several scholars have emphasized the importance of understanding decisions as social events that have certain characteristics and consequences. Hence, decisions have been defined as social constructions (Abend 2018), communication events (Luhmann 2018), social practices (Villar et al. 2018), and performative processes (Villar & Cabantous 2018; Villar & Roglio 2019). This view has also become more popular among organizational scholars (Ahrne et al. 2016; Apelt et al. 2017; Dobusch & Schoeneborn 2015; Grothe-Hammer 2018; Villar et al. 2018). Those scholars, e.g., inquired how decisions constitute organizational entities (Luhmann 2018), produce certain kinds of social order (Ahrne & Brunsson 2011), and participate in organizational strategizing (Villar et al. 2018).

We call for abstracts embracing this line of thinking. We welcome submissions that treat decisions as social events and investigate their role for organizations. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

  • Ontological novelty for decision-based approaches
  • Partial Organization and decided social order
  • Decisions as constitutive for organization
  • Social construction of decisions
  • Decision and materiality
  • Decision structures and premises
  • Decision and agency
  • Temporality, spatiality and processuality of decisions
  • Relationality, relativity and/or virtuality of decisions
  • Organizational pathologies of decision production/construction
Session Organizers:
Cristina BESIO, Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg, Germany, cristina.besio@hsu-hh.de,
Karina ROGLIO, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil, karinaroglio@gmail.com,
Michael GROTHE-HAMMER, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway, michael.grothe-hammer@ntnu.no
Eduardo VILLAR, Instituto Federal Catarinense, Brazil, eduardogvillar@gmail.com
Recorded Presentation
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