An Engine, Not a Camera

MacKenzie, Donald

doi:10.7551/mitpress/9780262134606.001.0001

Cited by 1,439 publications

(136 citation statements)

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“…Calculative practices have also played a crucial role in the processes whereby modern financial theory assumptions have been turned into social reality for actors (MacKenzie 2006). Because the theory decision analysts rely on assumes the existence of strong calculative capacities from actors, we expect calculability to play an important role in the constitution of rational forms of decision-making.…”

Section: Calculabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Performativity research shows that the core principles of economics shape management practices, tools, norms and language, and subsequently frame the business world according to the behavioural assumptions of this theory (Ferraro et al 2005;MacKenzie 2006). For example, the adoption of market-like relationships between employees and employers in the last twenty years has created outcomes that conform to the economic assumption of self-interested actors.…”

Section: Performativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Decision Theory as Practice: Crafting Rationality in Organizations

Cabantous

Gond

Johnson‐Cramer

2010

Organization Studies

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This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link DECISION THEORY AS PRACTICE: CRAFTING RATIONALITY IN ORGANIZATIONS AbstractThis paper explores the underlying practices whereby rationality -as defined in rational choice theory -is achieved within organizations. The qualitative coding of 58 case study reports produced by decision analysts, working in a wide range of settings highlights how organizational actors can make decisions in accord with the axioms of rational choice theory. Our findings describe the emergence of 'decision-analysis' as a field and reveal the complex and fragile socio-technical infrastructure underlying the craft of rationality, the central role of calculability, and the various forms of bricolage that decision-analysts deploy to make rational decisions happen. Overall, this research explores the social construction of rationality and identifies the practices sustaining the performativity of rational choice theory within organizations. Yet, this model has drawn its share of critics. The process school valuably complemented the rationalistic approach by uncovering the diversity of decision-making processes that organizations adopt (Mintzberg et al. 1976;Nutt 1984). It highlighted the various rationalities that inhabit organizations, such as the bounded (Allison 1971; March and Simon 1958; Simon 1955), political (Allison 1971Crozier and Friedberg 1980; Pettigrew 1973), and institutional rationalities (Lounsbury 2008;March and Olsen 1989). Key-words:This approach also unveiled the various uses, often symbolic, of formal decision-making tools in organizations (Langley 1989;Laroche 1995;Meyer and Rowan 1977). Lastly, critical perspectives on organizational decision-making challenged the concept of a 'decision' itself and demonstrated the potential irrationality of organizational decisions, (Brunsson 2007;Chia 1994;Cohen et al. 1972; Sfez 1973; Starbuck 1983;Tsang 2004 Finally, organizational researchers focus on decision-making processes rather than on the concrete practices of organizational decision-makers. Accordingly, they miss the role that material artefacts play in decision-making processes. Yet, some of the artefacts used by organizational actors embody a rational conception of decision-making. Hence, they could act as 'rationality carrier' and diffuse rationality through organizations. Thus, the 'lost' rationality of organizational decision-making (Laroche 1995) could be simply 2 As highlighted above, there is no consensus on what rationality is. Garfinkel (1967), for instance, identified up to fourteen forms of rationality. In this paper, we use the terms 'rationality' and 'rational decision-making' to refer to a specific view on rationality, that of rational choice theory (also called decision theory). From this perspective, a rational behaviour consists in evaluating the consequences of one's actions and choosing the actions that are consistent with one's preferences and beliefs so a...

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Section: Calculabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Performativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Decision Theory as Practice: Crafting Rationality in Organizations

Cabantous

Gond

Johnson‐Cramer

2010

Organization Studies

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“…For this purpose, recent research from the fields of the 'social studies of finance' (Callon, 1998;Knorr Cetina and Preda, 2005;Langley, 2008;MacKenzie, 2006) and the 'analytics of government' (Aitken, 2007;Dean, 1999;O'Malley, 2004) provide the necessary analytical tools, which conventional international political economy (IPE) lacks, to appreciate how the infrastructure of referentiality underpinning the politics of creditworthiness is (discursively) constituted. Meaning and materiality must be studied together.…”

Section: Unpacking Sovereign Ratingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Credit rating agencies and the sovereign debt crisis: Performing the politics of creditworthiness through risk and uncertainty

Paudyn

2013

Review of International Political Economy

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1As Member States struggle to retain the investment grades necessary to allow them to finance their governmental operations at a reasonable cost, credit rating agencies (CRAs) have been blamed for exacerbating a procyclical bias which only makes this task more difficult. How CRAs contribute to the constitution of the politics of limits underpinning the European sovereign debt crisis is at the core of this article. As a socio-technical device of control, sovereign ratings are an 'illocutionary' statement about budgetary health, which promotes an artificial fiscal normality. Subsequently, these austere politics of creditworthiness have 'perlocutionary' effects, which seek to censure political discretion through normalizing risk techniques aligned with the self-systemic, and thereby selfregulating, logic of Anglo-American versions of capitalism. The ensuing antagonistic relationship between the programmatic/expertise and operational/politics dimensions of fiscal governance leaves Europe vulnerable to crisis and the renegotiation of how the 'political' is established in the economy.New regulatory technical standards (RTS) can exacerbated the performative effects on CRAs, investors and Member States.

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“…Motores, não câmeras, na feliz metáfora de Mackenzie (2006). A riqueza desse filão interpretativo fez aumentar nos últimos anos, e de maneira notável, o interesse pelos conhecimentos econômicos e seus efeitos.…”

Section: Abril 2017unclassified

Apresentação: Explorando os sentidos sociais da economia

Guimarães

Vereta-Nahoum

2017

Tempo Soc.

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Passaram-se treze anos desde que a Tempo Social dedicou um primeiro Dossiê a estudos que mobilizavam as ferramentas e as tradições analíticas das ciências sociais para compreender fenômenos econômicos. Dois mil e quatro foi um importante ano para a construção da sociologia econômica no Brasil. Naquele momento, e sob inspiração da literatura que nos chegava dos Estados Unidos, da França e, em menor medida, do Reino Unido, já havia no Brasil um movimento de rearticulação de pesquisadores que se dedicavam a temas como desenvolvimento econômico, trabalho e empresários em torno da rubrica sociologia econômica. Não sem razão, portanto, a publicação do Dossiê coincidiu, no mesmo ano de 2004, com a proposição do primeiro grupo de trabalho reunindo parcela importante desses pesquisadores no âmbito do principal fórum de cientistas sociais no Brasil, o Encontro Anual da Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Ciências Sociais (Anpocs). Mas 2004 foi igualmente especial na difusão da assim chamada "nova sociologia econômica" em escala internacional. Naquele ano finalizaram-se os trabalhos de preparação da segunda (e marcante) edição do Handbook of economic sociology, organizado por Smelser e Swedberg (2005), reunindo uma plêiade de intelectuais atentos ao campo. Parte do argumento contido na nova introdução a esse volume, preparada por Swedberg, seria de algum modo antecipada em seu texto que a Tempo Social divulgou no Dossiê que veio à luz no volume 16, número 2.É certo que o projeto de um conhecimento sociológico sobre as práticas e conhecimentos econômicos é quase tão antigo quanto a sociologia mesma. Tanto Durkheim

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An Engine, Not a Camera

Cited by 1,439 publications

References 314 publications

Decision Theory as Practice: Crafting Rationality in Organizations

Decision Theory as Practice: Crafting Rationality in Organizations

Credit rating agencies and the sovereign debt crisis: Performing the politics of creditworthiness through risk and uncertainty

Apresentação: Explorando os sentidos sociais da economia

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