Deciding for Responsibility and Legitimation: Alternative Interpretations of Organizational Decision-making Nils Brunsson 1990 Marko Pelgonen Tuomas Kantola Joni Saarikivi

Objective of the article ●To show that: o Decisions don’t only serve the purpose of making a choice o Decision making sometimes plays three other roles: mobilizing action, distributing responsibility and providing legitimacy o Different roles imply different decision-making processes ➔ Decision-making in organizations is used to serve a variety of purposes other than only choice

Agenda 1.Choice 2.Mobilizing organizational action 3.Distributing responsibility 4. Providing legitimacy 5. Critique

Decision-making roles

1.Choice ●Decision making theories: o Define preferences o Look for alternative future actions o Predict consequences o Compare consequences with preference o Designate one alternative as a decision ➔ Rational and data greedy decision processes

2.Mobilizing organizational action ●Action -> Commitment from actors ●Rational vs Irrational decision processes o Rational decision processes can be used to avoid commitment o Irrational decision processes can be used for commitment building ●Hierarchy in organizations o With strong hierarchy, there is no acute need for commitment building (e.g. army) ●When decisions are just regarded as choices or mobilizers, the decision-maker seems to have an attractive role. (but there is more to it!)

3.Distributing responsibility “Causal attribution is an important condition for responsibility allocation in practice although it may not always be sufficient” ●Influence on events perceived by the decision-makers may not be equivalent to the influence as perceived by observers ●Decision-making can serve as a responsibility allocator only if observers perceive it as dealing with choice

3.Distributing responsibility II ●Responsibility allocation affects the design of the decision-making process o if the decision process is to designate who is causing an action, it must clearly point out some persons (formal meetings & voting) o the process must clearly establish the decision- makers as causes ●Responsibility can also be established by arguments ●All these methods can be used in reverse in order to avoid responsibility

4.Providing legitimacy All the previous aspects of decision connect decisions and actions ➔ However, decisions are often not followed by actions Outputs of organizations: Organizational Actions Organizational Decisions Talk

How different outputs can provide legitimacy ●Actions o Provide legitimacy if actions reflect values and norms in the environment ●Decisions o If decisions reflect external norms, they can provide legitimacy o If external norms are inconsistent with each other, an organization can act according to some norms and decide according to others o When used for legitimation, formal decisions must be clearly visible to the environment ●Talk o The spoken and written word with which the organization presents itself to the environment o Can be inconsistent with decisions and actions o Can be used to compensate decisions and actions in inconsistent norms

Critique ●Assertive tone o Lack of examples and argumentation (references) o “There is ample research that shows…” ●Small sample size and political focus o Studied 8 decision making processes -> yielded 4 different roles o High level - decision-making in lower levels? ●Faulty generalizations ●Narrow view of responsibility

Discussion