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The Concept Of Decision: A Deconstructive Analysis

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  • Robert Chia

Abstract

Decision‐making as a central concept in management and organization theory has had a colourful and controversial career spanning some 50 years. During this time its image and meaning has shifted substantially to the point where its explanatory value as an established conceptual category in management and organizational analysis has been questioned. In this article, I attempt a critical study of the concept of decision and try to show that the various attempts to replace it by other terms such as ‘action’, and ‘change’, overlook the ontological status of the decision‐making process. I argue here that decision is better understood as a series of interlocking pre‐definitive acts of punctuating the flow of human experiences in order to facilitate sense‐making and to alleviate our Cartesian anxiety. Decisions are not so much about ‘choice’or ‘intentions’as about the primordial ‘will to order’whereby interlocking configurations of micro‐incisions punctuating our phenomenal experiences contrive to construct and reinforce a stable but precarious version of reality. When viewed thus, decision‐making takes on a very different meaning ‐ one that accentuates the concrete everydayness of micro‐decisional acts which re‐enact the ongoing contestation between order and disorder, routinization and breakdown, organization and disorganization, chaos and cosmos. Such micro‐decisional ontological acts are what produces and sustains a version of reality to which we then subsequently respond. It is this ‘becoming’theory of decision‐making which is offered as an alternative to the ‘event’driven model of decisional theorizing.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Chia, 1994. "The Concept Of Decision: A Deconstructive Analysis," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(6), pages 781-806, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:jomstd:v:31:y:1994:i:6:p:781-806
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6486.1994.tb00639.x
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    Cited by:

    1. Michael Grothe-Hammer & Héloïse Berkowitz & Olivier Berthod, 2022. "Decisional organization theory: towards an integrated framework of organization," Post-Print hal-03699112, HAL.
    2. Everett, Jeff, 2011. "Norman Macintosh: Accounting academe's joyful kynic," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 148-157.
    3. Eranova, Mariya & Prashantham, Shameen, 2016. "Decision making and paradox: Why study China?," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 193-201.
    4. Rasche, Andreas & Seidl, David, 2020. "A Luhmannian perspective on strategy: Strategy as paradox and meta-communication," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    5. Rehn, Alf & Lindahl, Marcus, 2012. "Muddling through in innovation — On incremental failure in developing an engine," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 65(6), pages 807-813.
    6. Laure Cabantous & Jean-Pascal Gond, 2011. "Rational Decision Making as Performative Praxis: Explaining Rationality's Éternel Retour," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(3), pages 573-586, June.
    7. Edwin Trevor-Roberts & Polly Parker & Jorgen Sandberg, 2019. "How uncertainty affects career behaviour: A narrative approach," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 44(1), pages 50-69, February.

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