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Rational Choice, Situated Action, and the Social Control of Organizations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Diane Vaughan
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Abstract

The legal and administrative apparatus responsible for the social control of organizations relies extensively on the deterrent effects of punishment. This strategy presumes a rational choice model of organizational misconduct that decontextualizes decisionmaking, emphasizing consequences while ignoring how preferences are formed. I raise three challenges to the rational choice/deterrence model of social control: (1) research and theory on decisionmaking, (2) a sociological paradigm that situates individual action in a structure/culture/agency nexus that influences interpretation, meaning, and action at the local level, and (3) an analysis of the Challenger launch decision at NASA as situated action, showing how structure, culture, and history shaped preferences and choice. These challenges suggest a need to reorient regulatory activity toward the social context of decisionmaking. I conclude with a research agenda to explore the relationship between situated action, preference formation, and rational choice.

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Research Article
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Law & Society Review , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , 1998 , pp. 23 - 61
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Copyright © The Law and Society Association, 1998. All Rights Reserved

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Footnotes

I am grateful for a 1996–1997 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, for the support that enabled me to write this article. Thanks also to Robert Gibbons, Michael Hechter, Robert A. Kagan, and three anonymous reviewers for comments that helped me clarify my argument.

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