The Relationship between Procedural Rationality and Political Behavior in Strategic Decision Making

Despite the central place of rationality and political behavior in the decision-making literature, we know little about the relationship between these two dimensions. Can decisions be made using both rational and political methods, or must managers use one approach or the other? These questions were addressed in a study of 61 strategic decisions in 24 companies using a multiple-informant, structured interview protocol. Results indicate that procedural rationality and political behavior are independent dimensions of the strategic decision-making process. The implications of our findings for future strategic decision-making research are discussed.     

Directed Matching and Monetary Exchange

We develop a model of monetary exchange where, as in the random matching literature, agents trade bilaterally and not through centralized markets. Rather than assuming they match exogenously and at random, however, we determine who meets whom as part of the equilibrium. We show how to formalize this process of directed matching in dynamic models with double coincidence problems, and present several examples and applications that illustrate how the approach can be used in monetary theory. Some of our results are similar to those in the random matching literature; others differ significantly.     

From altruism to sociality: A switch in perception

The article critically reviews concepts and uses of the term altruism in relation to the emergence of the capitalist welfare state. It argues that altruism may be regarded as a fetishized representation of ‘sociality’ and that notions of altruism tend to obscure or distort understandings of the essential social interdependence that characterises humanity as a species. The article reaches back to anthropological evidence, to religious and philosophical influences, and to insights from scientific inquiry and it makes a case for a humanistic switch in perspective within the study of social policy.     

ON THE SELECTION OF CRITICAL VALUES IN SEQUENTIAL DECISION PROBLEMS

This paper explores the effect which the choice of critical values in sequential decisions has on the overall distribution of payoffs. It demonstrates in the context of a simple two-stage sequential decision model that the mean and variance of the overall distribution can be highly sensitive to the choice of critical values. Finally, it considers the problem of selecting optimal critical values when a standard meanvariance approach is used.