ISBN:
9781784417253
Content:
Following Philip Selznick’s lead in using pragmatist social science to understand issues of public concern we conducted a study of failed innovation in the commercial construction industry (CCI). We find that social heuristics – collectively constructed and maintained interpretive decision-making frames – significantly shape economic and non-economic decision-making practices. Social heuristics are the outcome of industry-based “institutionalization processes” and are widely held and commonly relied on in CCI to reduce uncertainty endemic to decision-making; they provide actors with both a priori and ex post facto justifications for economic decisions that appear socially rational to industry co-participants. In the CCI – a project-centered production network – social heuristics as shared institutions sustain network-based social order but in so doing discourage novel technologies and impede innovation. Social heuristics are actor-level constructs that reflect macro-level institutional arrangements and networked production relations. The concept of social heuristics offers the promise of developing a genuinely social theory of individual economic choice and action that is historically informed, contextually situated, and neither psychologically nor structurally reductionist.
In:
Institutions and ideals, Bingley, U.K. : Emerald, 2015, (2015), Seite 235-282, 9781784417253
In:
Emerald Group Publishing Limited
In:
year:2015
In:
pages:235-282
Language:
English
DOI:
10.1108/S0733-558X20150000044010
URL:
Volltext
(Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
