Rationality as the Basic Criterion for the Evaluation of Judgment and Decision-Making Processes

Prior to an exploration of bounded rationality in internationalization processes of companies, it is necessary to take a closer look at the general matter of rationality in judgment and decision-making processes. This is because internationalization processes are shaped by a series of consecutive decisions based on the individual and organizational expectations of decision-makers. These judgment and decision-making processes should be based on rational grounds, or in other words, on an appropriate analysis of alternatives as well as on information processing. Rationality is the basic criterion for the evaluation of the plausibility of processual decisions. Yet, as already pointed out in the introduction of this dissertation, the actions of decision-makers and their expectations are not necessarily based on objective, fully justifiable grounds: Not only are managers working in difficult environments (particularly in the context of international business), in which they are confronted with imperfect situational contexts, e.g., lack of information, but they are also subjected to cognitive dispositions that trigger boundedly rational and even so-called irrational behavior. But in addition to potential limits of rationality there is furthermore the fundamental question of what rationality actually is. What defines ‘objective and fully justifiable’ grounds? In different contexts, the term of rationality is used by philosophers, theologians, mathematicians, sociologists, and economists. A clarification of this dissertation’s underlying understanding of rationality is therefore inevitable for a thorough analysis of bounded rationality in the context of internationalization processes. This clarification will be conducted in Sect. 2.1.