Social Heuristics: Decision Making and Innovation in a Networked Production Market

Abstract

In a study of failed innovation in the commercial construction industry we find that social heuristics - collectively constructed and maintained interpretive decision making frames - influence economic decision making practices and material outcomes. Social heuristics are widely institutionalized and commonly relied upon to reduce uncertainty in decision making; they provide actors with both a priori and ex post facto justifications for economic decisions that appear socially rational. In the commercial construction industry, social heuristics sustain market order but also discourage novel technologies and impede innovation. Social heuristics are actor-level constructs that reflect macro-level institutional arrangements and networked production relations. The concept of social heuristics offers the promise of developing a genuinely social theory of individual economic choice and action that is historically informed, contextually situated, and neither psychologically or structurally reductionist.