Rational choice, situated action, and the social control of organizations

From: Law & Society Review | Date: January 1, 1998| Author: | Copyright information

The legal and administrative apparatus responsible for the social control of organizations relies extensively on the deterrent effects of punishment. This strategy presumes a rational choice model of organizational misconduct that decontextualizes decisionmaking, emphasizing consequences while ig noring how preferences are formed. I raise three challenges to the rational choice/ deterrence model of social control: (1) research and theory on decisionmaking, (2) a sociological paradigm that situates individual action in a structure/ culture/agency nexus that influences interpretation, meaning, ...

Read all of this article with a FREE trial to HighBeam Research

Related newspaper, magazine, and trade journal articles from HighBeam Research

(Including press releases, facts, information, and biographies)

Rational choice and categorical reason.(Preferences and Rational Choice: New Perspectives and Legal Implications)
; ...AS A NORMATIVE IDEAL The theory of rational choice, as understood by most economists...ends. (1) Positively, the theory of rational choice is used to describe, explain, and...show that the maximizing model of rational choice often does not provide a very accurate...
Social control in Cuba
; ...been so successful in its system of social control, and why might that system's effectiveness...regime still persists. The system of social control in the island has so far minimized...primarily to the operation of formal social control mechanisms, despite their effectiveness...
Morris, Irwin L., Joe A. Oppenheimer, and Karol Edward Soltan, eds. Politics from Anarchy to Democracy: Rational Choice in Political Science.(Book Review)
; ...Politics from Anarchy to Democracy: Rational Choice in Political Science Palo Alto, CA...volume serves as an introduction to rational choice theory, its application, and the current...the discipline. The contributors use rational choice as an analytical tool to address fundamental...
Material Manifestations of Social Control. (Anthropology).(Brief Article)
; Material Manifestations of Social Control. Jared Barrett, Western Michigan University...Anthropology Department, Kalamazoo, MI 49008 Social control in society has been prevalent throughout...thought have examined the concept of social control and how social scientists have contributed...
Tracing the rational choice origins of social capital: is social capital a neo-liberal "Trojan Horse"?
; ...social capital', particularly within rational choice debates over the role of the state...challenge the tenets of traditional rational choice theory and the agenda of economic...intimately linked with developments in rational choice theory. This link is well noted by...
The Limits of Rational Choice: Bush and Clinton Budget Summitry.
; Rational choice models change uncertainly into risk...of constituents. Prescriptively, rational choice assumes that maximizing or satisfying...payoffs for the society at large. Rational choice models are often used by economists...
Pourquoi pas? Rational Choice as a Basic Theory of HRM
; Pourquoi pas? Rational Choice as a Basic Theory of HRM** A...sufficient. Instead, the contemporary "rational choice" approach may serve as a "new...explanations in HRM. In addition "rational choice" is conscious of the ignorance...
Decision Rules in the European Union: A Rational Choice Perspective.(Review)
; Decision Rules in the European Union: A Rational Choice Perspective. Edited by PETER MOSER...to illustrate the ways in which a rational choice approach contributes to our understanding...it is never quite made clear how a rational choice perspective differs from other available...
Racial threat and social control: a test of the political, economic, and threat of black crime hypotheses *.
; ...scientists continue to debate whether the social control of crime is influenced by extralegal...determinants of treatment by various social control agents. The major theoretical impetus...is predictive of various aspects of social control, including police use of deadly force...
Self-control, child effects, and informal social control: a direct test of the primacy of sociogenic factors.
; ...theory, and the concept of informal social control, which is at the heart of Sampson and...hypothesize that self-control and informal social control should both maintain substantively...of self-control vis-a-vis informal social control makes the two concepts necessarily...