Organizational Humanism and Postpositivism 133
ends. In their rules, decisionmakers will rationally seek effi ciency in the direction
of preferred objectives, determined by some measure of the extent to which goals
are being achieved (Harmon and Mayer 1986, 123).
Although modifi ed over the years by satisfi cing and bounded rationality, de-
cision theory nevertheless understands the decision to be the key unit of analysis.
Th e action theory alternative argues that patterned relationships among thinking,
deciding, and doing assumed in decision theory are seldom found. Furthermore,
the dichotomy between facts and values and the dichotomy between means and
ends were dismissed long ago (Lindblom 1965). As accurate representations of
reality, facts, and values, means and ends are seldom so easily separated as deci-
sion theory suggests.
Action theory, the interpretive theory alternative to decision theory, claims
the following:
- Th e epistemological distinction between values and facts, however
useful it may be for instrumental purposes, refl ects an artifi cial re-
construction of the process by which the social world is constituted,
maintained, and contested. Th ese social processes are characterized
initially by the fusion of what we have come to call “values” and
“facts.” Th us, the fundamental diff erences between the action and
the decision perspectives are explainable by their diff ering stances re-
garding the epistemological priority of distinction. - Th e possible existence of the transcendent moral good inheres in the
process by which social life is constituted rather than, at least chiefl y, in
ends that are ostensibly informed by values. Ends, including purposes
and interests, may be seen as derived from and contingent on social
processes. “Moral” is therefore not a synonym for values or ends, but
rather describes a quality that inheres in acting subjects who are en-
gaged in social interaction. - Social processes are principally processes of collective sense making
through which social “facts” are produced by negotiation. By exten-
sion, organizations are chiefl y structured contexts for sense making
and only secondarily decisionmaking arrangements. - Rather than thought preceding action (linked by decisions), thought
and action are mutually constitutive and coextensive. Decisions are
not objectively real but are objectifi cations of the ongoing fl ow of so-
cial process. Informally, decisions may be thought of as “stopped
processes.”
In the action-theoretic perspective, organizational purpose and values can
only emerge from social processes based on interactive patterns of action and
the values attached to them. Harmon points out that “the good does not reside
in preconceived purpose as informed by abstract thinking about moral values.