Decision Premises Research Articles

Unilateral consensus: Legitimation as a societal phenomenon in Luhmannian systems theory

AbstractFor Niklas Luhmann, the political system's primary function is the establishment of decision premises for future decisions, with these decisions being applied across different societal subsystems. However, Luhmann recognized that this resulted in the political system running the risk of de‐differentiating itself when producing collectively binding decisions. Luhmann solved this problem by restricting the political system's role, relegating it to society's sidelines. But there are many examples of where we would want the benefits of collectively binding decisions in society, such as planning systems. This raises the question how can we have decisions that serve as premises for future decisions across societal subsystems while maintaining each system's differentiation and legitimacy? To answer this question, we will redouble our focus on meaning in considering each system's legitimation process. Through the lens of meaning, we will show how legitimation can bring independent systems to make shared decisions, thus producing unilateral consensus.

Bad governance in Australia and how to mitigate it

AbstractWe argue that new public management (NPM) and other processes have led to adverse selection and agency rent problems within the political elite in Australia. The politicisation of the public service and the rise of careerist politicians have led to the de‐separation of what was once two distinct career paths within the political elite. This has changed the decision premise of the advisory system for policy formation and implementation, leading to worse public policy, even policy disasters. We recommend that some of the principles of the Westminster form of government be updated and re‐instituted for political elites within the structures of the Australian government. We canvass four reforms: return to merit appointments and promotion for public servants; a return to tenure for senior public servants; an enhanced push for descriptive representation within the career public service; and a formal role for staffers with centralised appointments, inability to instruct public servants, and restrictions on political and policy roles once leaving public service. These are designed to end the distrust, perceived corruption, and poor governance in the Australian government.Points for practitioners Having separate career paths for non‐elected policy elites and elected elites is vital for information transmission and good governance. Each should operate with separate decision premises and work together in creative tension. NPM practices have weakened the separate career paths of public servants and politicians, leading to adverse selection and agency rent for both. The Westminster system has a logic that has been diluted or weakened within the Australian government, leading to poorer policy and policy disasters. The paper presents four areas for reform.

Family Decision-Making Path for the Referral of Terminal Patients in Tertiary Hospitals

Objective To gain an in-depth understanding of the motivations,patterns,and related factors in family decision-making regarding the referral of terminal patients in tertiary hospitals. Methods Using purposive sampling,terminal patients and their family members from three tertiary hospitals in Beijing were selected as subjects.Semi-structured interviews were conducted,and the interview data were subjected to thematic analysis. Results Following the saturation principle,a total of 11 patients and 15 family members were included.The interview data were organized and analyzed,yielding six major themes:decision premises,decision patterns,family support,support from the referring hospital's medical team,referral channel conditions,and involvement of volunteer teams and social support.Based on these findings,a flowchart illustrating the family decision-making process for the referral of terminal patients was constructed. Conclusions The study provides a comprehensive analysis of various factors influencing family decision-making in the referral of terminal patients in tertiary hospitals.The results underscore the significance of internal and external factors,emphasizing the integrated impact of decision patterns,family support,medical team support,referral channel conditions,and the involvement of volunteer teams and social support.The research offers profound insights into improving the referral process for terminal patients and enhancing the quality of family decision-making.It provides valuable recommendations for future improvements in medical services and decision support.

Putting the individual in the context of the organization: A Carnegie perspective on decision-making.

The majority of decision research portrays decision-makers as largely decontextualized, separate from the institutional and social factors that influence their choosing. On the occasions when context is considered, it is rarely organizational, despite the prominence of organizations in people's lives. By contrast, the Carnegie perspective on decision-making emphasizes context, particularly that of organizations, as a central concern. We develop this contrast by first reviewing the limited role of context in neoclassical economic and psychological depictions of choice. Next, we present key elements of the organizational decision context in the Carnegie perspective: decision premises, standard operating procedures and decision rules, organizational structures, learning environments, and identity-situation interaction. We then consider the importance of interpretation to decision-making in context. In particular, rather than being given and clear, the meaning of decision context is often ambiguous and must be interpreted or constructed. The Carnegie perspective underscores the importance of this interpretive process to both decision-making and everyday life. We conclude by considering aspects of context that merit greater examination, as well as the implications for behavioral theorizing of acknowledging the contextualized nature of action.

Informality in strategic communication. Making the case for a forgotten concept

PurposeAlthough current strategic communication research is particularly interested in deviations from normative ideals, there is a surprising lack of interest in the structures that lead to such deviations from formal specifications. To this end, this paper explores the classic, but of late largely forgotten concept of informality. The aim is to develop a theoretical framework and a systematization that can be used to answer central questions in strategic communication research. The focus is on three research questions: How can formal and informal structures of strategic organizational communication be systematized? How are formal and informal organizational structures thematized in strategic organizational communication? What is the relationship between (in)formal structures of strategic organizational communication and the thematization of (in)formal organizational structures?Design/methodology/approachThe conceptual contribution is based on systems theoretical organization theory, which understands formal structures as decided decision premises and informal structures as undecided decision premises.FindingsThe understanding of informal expectation structures presented here has enormous potential for describing and researching central issues in strategic communication research in a far more significant way, both theoretically and empirically. For example, decoupling can be described in a much more differentiated way than is possible using the neo-institutionalist perspective.Practical implicationsThe systematizing framework for researching informal structures enables a deeper understanding of informal structures and thus a better handling of them in practice. In addition, the framework provides a basis for future empirical studies.Originality/valueInformal phenomena and structures seem to be the elephant in the room in many discourses in strategic communication research. With the theoretical perspective and systematization presented here, these phenomena can finally be explored in a differentiated and meaningful way.

Crisis decision-making inside the core executive: Rationality, bureaucratic politics, standard procedures and the COVID-19 lockdown

The article explains how the unprecedented pandemic management decision to lock down the country came about, using the case of Norway and drawing on unique interview material from political and administrative executives. Urgency and precaution were the government’s primary considerations in March 2020, with proportionality and due process only peripheral decision premises. Voices of moderation were drowned out at critical moments to pave the way for a lockdown. Moreover, Norway’s lockdown decision lacked distinct and official agency, with none of the key actors able to say precisely when, where and by whom this decision of unprecedented size and scope had been taken. An interpretation using Graham Allison’s analytical models shows that the rational policy model most accurately captures the case. The suggested implication is that when senior political executives take active control of an ultra-high-stakes process, decisions are unlikely to be the product of political resultants or organisational output.

Why Organization Matters in “Algorithmic Discrimination”

Research into “algorithmic discrimination” has largely dismissed the fact that algorithms are often developed and used by organizations. In this article, we show that organizational sociology can contribute to a more nuanced perspective on “algorithmic decision-making.” Drawing on the concept of decision premises, we differentiate between various formal structures, particularly between different decision programs (conditional and purposive). This allows us to challenge two key assumptions, namely that human decision-makers rely heavily on algorithmically generated recommendations and that discrimination against protected groups needs to be solved mainly at the level of code.We identify the usefulness of distinguishing between conditional and purposive decision programs via a case study centered on the legal context: the risk assessment software “Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions” (COMPAS) that is employed in the US criminal justice system to inform judicial personnel about the recidivism risk of defendants. By analyzing the organizational structures, according to which the COMPAS score is formally and informally embedded in courts, we point out that the score represents an ambiguous and redundant information source for judges. The practice of minimizing the relevance of the score and decoupling it from the legal reasoning backstage particularly reflects the professional decision autonomy of judges, which is inherent in the legal system. The core finding of our approach is that strategies to reduce discrimination should not only scrutinize data quality or the statistical model but also consider the specific forms, functions, and consequences of the organizational structures that condition the ways in which discriminatory differences may or may not be (re)produced.

Counter-Hegemonic Decision Premises in Commons-Based Peer Production: A Degrowth Case Study

Capitalism is evidently the main cause of ecological degradation, climate change and social inequality. Degrowth as a counter-hegemony opposes the capitalist imperatives of economic growth and capital accumulation and radically seeks to transform society towards sustainability. This has strong political economic implications. Economic organisations and modes of production are essential in overcoming capitalist hegemony. This article investigates two commons-based peer production (CBPP) organisations in a qualitative case study by asking how they could align with degrowth counter-hegemony to help overcome capitalism. Social systems theory is used as an organisational lens to empirically research decision premises and their degrowth counter-hegemonic alignment. The results show that this alignment is possible in relatively small organisations. However, to help degrowth succeed, CBPP needs to be more widely adopted, for which larger organisations seem better equipped. Future studies focusing on the concept of scaling wide in CBPP networks in the context of degrowth counter-hegemony are suggested.

Managerial Controls in Private Family Firms: The Influence of a Family’s Decision Premises

In most studies, the affiliation of the manager (family-affiliated or non-family affiliated) and supposedly related behavior (agent or steward) is considered the sole antecedent to explain a family business’ (non) professionalization of managerial controls. This paper, based on Luhmann’s new system theory, examines whether a family’s decision premises influence the design of managerial controls in family firms in addition to a manager’s family affiliation status. Using survey data of 135 large and medium-sized Brazilian family firms and testing the hypotheses with SEM, this study provides evidence that a family’s decision premises significantly influence the design of managerial controls in family firms. This study provides evidence that when a family’s intention to transfer the firm to next generation (TGO) is high, more formal controls, as well as controls of a more participative nature are adopted in a family firm. Moreover, the results do not indicate that the level of family involvement in management affects the design of controls in firms with high TGO. The results only showed a significant relationship between a family’s intention to control and influence (FCI) the firm and the absence of participative controls. In addition, these findings also illustrate that each single family-induced decision premise has the potential to explain family firm behavior, since each of the two premises considered in our study is related to a different design of the controls adopted by the family firm.

Concealing paradoxes in decision-making during hospital hybridization - a systems theoretical analysis.

While previous health-care-related hybridity research has focused on macro- and micro-level investigations, this paper aims to study hybridization at the organizational level, with a specific focus on decision-making. The authors investigate how new politico-economic expectations toward a university hospital as a hybrid organization become internalized via organizational decision-making, resulting in the establishment of a new business collaboration and innovation-oriented unit. The authors employed a social systems theoretical framework to explore organizational decision-making processes involved in the establishment of the new hybrid hospital unit. Drawing on 15 interviews and nine organizational documents, the authors describe and analyze three decision-making cycles using the concepts of complexity, decision and justification. The findings reveal the challenging nature of decision-making during hybridization, as decisions regarding unprecedented organizational structures and activities cannot be justified by traditional decision premises. The authors show that decision-makers use a combination of novel justification strategies, namely, justification by problems, by examples and by obligations, to legitimize decisions oriented at non-traditional activities. Further, the analysis reveals how expectations of several societal systems, i.e. health care, education, science, law, economy and politics, are considered in decision-making taking place in hybrid organizations. The study draws attention to the complexity of decision-making in a hybrid context and highlights the role of justification strategies in partially reducing complexity by concealing the paradoxical nature of decision-making and ensuring the credibility of resulting decisions. Also, the study presents a move beyond the dualism inherent in many previous hybridity studies by illustrating the involvement of several societal systems in hybridization.

Optimization Parameters of Trading System with Constant Modulus of Unit Return

The unit return is determined as the return in the quotation currency (QCR) per the unit of base exchange medium (BEM). The main purpose is to examine the applicability of a trading system with a constant modulus of unit return (CMUR). The CMUR system supports speculative operations related to the exchange rate, given as the BEM quotation per the QCR. Premises for investment decisions are based on knowledge about the quotation dynamics described by its binary representation. This knowledge is described by a prediction table containing the conditional probability distributions of exchange rate increments. Any prediction table depends on observation range. Financial effectiveness of any CMUR system is assessed in the usual way by interest rate and risk index based on Shannon entropy. The main aim of our paper is to present algorithms which may be used for selecting effective CMUR systems. Required unit return modulus and observation range are control parameters applied for management of CMUR systems. Optimal values of these parameters are obtained by implementation of the proposed algorithm. All formal considerations are illustrated by an extensive case study linked to gold trading.

Strategy of a top agriculture co-operative in the central planned economy. The differentiation of the organization in perspective social system theory

ABSTRACT The article examines differentiation of the agriculture co-operative JZD Slušovice which was one of the most efficient co-operatives in the centrally planned economy in Czechoslovakia in 80s. The purpose is to explain differentiation ways of the co-operative with the case production of computers as sideline production in the mentioned period. According to Luhmann’s social system theory, the co-operative represents a social organized system differentiated from the environment defined as CZ economy. The theoretical concept decision premises including the concept the form of firm by D. Baecker are used for the analysis. The result of the analysis are decision premises specified as programs that show how a management decided on production strategy. It means distinctions between how organization self-observed and observed environment, and a way of observing, that is decision making on the strategy, differentiated the co-operative from environment. One of programs was the objective decision-making premise on what the product needs to be like to bring profit. This objective determined decision-making premises of condition programs, so decision-making on resources, which would help achieve such TNS PCs, the style of how to offer them to public so they would be accepted, and decisions on image to be created through the TNS PCs.

Strategizing Before Strategic Decision Making

Processes of strategic problem formulation are not only core to strategic decision making, but may be paramount. Indeed, one cannot even assess whether a situation is strategic until the problem has been formulated. To illustrate the importance of problem formulation, we present a case study, and after highlighting key features, explore several ways in which the case’s problem could be formulated. These alternative formulations highlight how strategic decision premises can dramatically affect decision making. Problem formulation, we next advance, is intimately related to the development of theories or conjectures, especially at the group level. We therefore propose that strategizing processes are appropriately understood as vital mechanisms that can be normatively designed, taught, and used in a practical way. No single formulation process is appropriate for all situations, we note, as effective and efficient formulation processes depend on a variety of organizational and situational factors. An additional consideration arises with respect to how the problem formulation process may yield profound implications not only for developing alternative strategies and making the strategic decision, but also for implementing these decisions. Based on these insights, we describe potential research opportunities and ways to enhance teaching to advance the theory and practice of strategizing.

SPORT OFFERS FOR REFUGEES IN GERMANY. PROMOTING AND HINDERING CONDITIONS IN VOLUNTARY SPORT CLUBS

After the long summer of migration, strong social and political movements of solidarity with and resistance against refugees developed in Europe. Expressions of solidarity and resistance were also recognisable in the sport system, especially in voluntary sport clubs (VSCs). As a result of this observation, the following article addresses the question: “Which organisational conditions of VSCs promote or hinder the implementation of sport activities for refugees?” To this aim, the article analyses and discusses the results of three research projects concerning sport offers for refugees in Germany. The interview material (n=49) collected in these projects was examined through the qualitative technique of thematic analysis and interpreted through a systems theoretical framework. The results show that conditions which promote and hinder the implementation of sport offers for refugees were identified in all formal (decision programmes, communication channels, and human resources) and informal (organisation culture) decision premises. Furthermore, the implementation of sport offers for refugees is particularly dependent on human resources within the sport clubs. The data show that the resolute will of individuals or small groups of people is highly relevant for the implementation of these sport offers. Finally, when it comes to organizing support for refugees, VSCs display an unexpected dynamic and a high capacity to mobilise resources within a short period of time. The discussion reflects these results and articulates strategies to safeguard, foster, and facilitate the social engagement of VSCs in relation to refugees.

Portfel wieloskładnikowy z nieprecyzyjną wartością bieżącą daną trapezoidalną liczby rozmytej

The article includes an analysis of a multiple asset portfolio, paying special attention to an imprecision risk, burdening the component instruments. The imprecision of decision premises is modeled in the imprecisely stated present value of portfolio assets, given subjectively by the investor in the form of trapezoidal fuzzy numbers. Next, for each asset and consisting portfolio we define imprecision measures appointed based on a fuzzy discounting factor. Analyzed theoretical model takes into account not only rational premises of a decision, but also allows for an inclusion of behavioral, technical and technological factors. During the performed research, relations between imprecision risk measures of assets and portfolio were found. Imprecision risk assessments are computed based on energy and entropy measures. Also, a case study is given, presenting mechanics of the model and methods of calculating risk measures. Performed analysis led to formulating some conclusions about the form and behavior of imprecision risk burdening a portfolio.

Capturing the Familiness of Family Businesses: Development of the Family Influence Familiness Scale (FIFS)

This article develops a familiness scale measuring the family influence on the business via decision premises that express familiness. In three studies, we examine familiness with qualitative and quantitative approaches based on new systems theory. Narrative interviews are employed to generate items. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses led to a multidimensional scale (Family Influence Familiness Scale [FIFS]) comprising six dimensions: (1) ownership, management, and control; (2) proficiency level of active family members; (3) sharing of information between active family members; (4) transgenerational orientation; (5) family–employee bond; and (6) family business identity. Results indicate high reliability and validity levels.

On the history of the form of administrative decisions: how decisions begin to desire uncertainty

In management and organization history, the concept of the decision has often been understood as an ahistorical phenomenon. The changing contexts, technologies, and subjects of decision-making have been thoroughly studied, but decision itself is rarely made an object of historical investigation. Addressing the question of how the very form of the decision changes in the course of history, this article studies the Danish public administration from the late nineteenth century to today. We argue that, over time, public administration reacts to self-produced complexity by developing higher and higher orders of decision-making resulting in a form of decision-making that deconstructs the very difference between decision premises and decision. We conclude that public administration has undergone a development where decision-making is increasingly used not to absorb uncertainty, but to create uncertainty in order to create new possibilities for public administration itself.

From Added Values to Augmented Realities. Introducing the Special Issue of Management and Functional Differentiation

In this reintroduction to the concept of functional differentiation, we present historical evidence that the perceived proliferation of moral communication in management and organization research and practice is at odds with the principles of management and organization. We show that there is neither direct need nor direct way to derive decision premises from values as decisions and values cancel each other if they are not moderated by functional differentiation. We conclude that the future of management and organization be in decision‐making without values and introduce a broad scope of tools and domains for value‐free management by functional differentiation. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A Model of Strategic Marketing Decision Premises

<p>The paper utilized some relevant empirical and conceptual works in extant literature to sketch a model of the relations among marketing environment, strategic marketing decisions and effectiveness. The paper reveals that some forms of supports exist in extant literature regarding the impacts of marketing environment on strategic marketing decisions and effectiveness, and impacts of strategic marketing decisions on strategic marketing effectiveness. However, relevant extant literature seems to have ignored the impacts of strategic marketing decisions on marketing environment. Also, relevant extant literature contains some gaps regarding the impacts of strategic marketing effectiveness on marketing environment and strategic marketing decisions. The paper concludes that these important relationships in strategic marketing decisions, omitted in extant literature, should be incorporated for a more comprehensive understanding of the relevant issues in strategic management decisions. The paper proposes an empirical research agenda to test the model in some business functions, sectors, cultures, contexts or premises.</p>

Testing an Economic Model of Nonprofit Growth: Analyzing the Behaviors and Decisions of Nonprofit Organizations, Private Donors, and Governments

This study draws an economic model of the growth of nonprofit organizations by analyzing the behaviors of three major actors—nonprofit organizations, private donors, and governments—in making decisions on the allocation of limited resources for nonprofit services. Since decisions made by each actor affect resource allocation, it is important to understand what drives these decisions. The model was tested using an unbalanced, 463 panel dataset collected from 28 OECD countries over a 23-year period. The results indicated that macro- and micro-economic trends and government policies framed the decision premises of the three major actors, which led them to leverage the supply and demand for goods and services and, in turn, determined how they allocated limited resources for nonprofit services. This result implies that understanding the interdependencies of all sectors of the economy is critical to comprehending the size and development of the nonprofit sector. Effective management of micro-economic policies and macro-economic stability is necessary. More important, however, is understanding how a decision in one part of the economy will have intended and unintended effects on the nonprofit sector.