A theory of rationality is a theory that evaluates instances of reasoning as rational, irrational, or (ir)rational to some degree. Theories can be categorized as rule-based or consequentialist. Rule-based theories say that rational reasoning accords with certain rules (e.g., of logic or probability). Consequentialist theories say that rational reasoning tends to produce good consequences. For i...

Organizational theorists built their knowledge of decision-making through a progressive critique of rational choice theory. Their positioning towards rationality however, is at odds with the observation of rationality persistence in organizational life. This paper addresses this paradox. It proposes a new perspective on rationality that allows the theorizing of the production of rational decisi...

This chapter reviews selected findings in research on reasoning, judgment, and choice and considers the systematic ways in which people violate basic requirements of the corresponding normative analyses. Recent objections to the empirical findings are then considered; these objections question the findings' relevance to assumptions about rationality. These objections address the adequacy of the...

This paper explores the extent to which the lack of rationality of economic agents has affected the economic fluctuations and the social welfare of the U.S. hog market. A group of articles has ascribed the business cycles of the hog market, observed by economists as early as the last century, mainly to the lack of rationality (cobweb expectations) of economic agents. In contrast, others, assumi...

Bounded rationality is an especially appropriate framework for organic dairy adoption decisions as it recognizes internal and external constraints which are critical in understanding complex farm decision making. Farmers use of, and access to, information is examined using interview data gathered from organic, conventional, managed graziers, and Amish dairy farmers in Southwestern Wisconsin at ...

Best-response sets (Pearce [29, 1984]) characterize the epistemic condition of “rationality and common belief of rationality.” When rationality incorporates a weak-dominance (admissibility) requirement, the self-admissible set (SAS) concept (Brandenburger-Friedenberg-Keisler [18, 2008]) characterizes “rationality and common assumption of rationality.” We analyze the behavior of SAS’s in some ga...

In this paper it is argued that the mechanistic framework allows only a very limited understanding of organizational rationality and that the concept of organizational rationality needs serious reconsideration, based on the assumption that theoretical understanding and articulation are the corner-stones of rationality. After a brief discussion about the fundamental importance of rationality for...

Many industries utilize competitive, online reverse auctions for industrial procurement. In many of these auctions, the lowest price bidder is not guaranteed to be the winner and the buyer has full latitude to select the winner from any of the qualified bidders. What are the competitive bidding strategies of bidders in these online auctions? Using an adaptive hierarchical bounded rationality mi...

This paper raises the issue of ergonomics' role in giving primacy to fully rational individual human actors in the creation of system failure, despite its commitment to see action as constrained by design and operational features of work. Reflecting on recent contributions to the journal, ergonomics' dilemma is considered against Enlightenment assumptions about individual human reason as the ro...