From Decision to Action in Organizations: Decision-Making as a Social Representation

How should we understand decision-making in organizations? And how important is it for our understanding of organizations? A wide body of empirical and theoretical research---labeled here as the decision-making perspective---assumes that decision-making is a fundamental element of organizational processes, and aims to identify different types of decision-making processses in organizations. But what exactly is decision-making? The paper argues that this perspective suffers from insufficient debate on the definition of its research object. One of the main limits of the decision-making perspective is its understanding of organizational decision-making as series of separate decision-making episodes. Stressing the continuity of organizational processes, an emerging “action perspective” challenges this view. It argues that decision and decision-making are either rare, marginal phenomena, or artificial constructs producing biased observations. Thus, some authors suggest that we would better do without decision-making. The paper argues that, because people in organizations think of decision and decision-making as realities, the concept of organizational action should not be opposed to decision and decision-making. Decision and decision-making are best understood as social representations: they influence organizations’ members’ ways of understanding and behaving in organizations. They influence processes, they facilitate action, and they give meaning to what happens in organizations. 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.