190 7: Decision Th eory
to institutional decisionmaking assume that such matters are more amenable to
management than evidence would suggest.
Methodology
Studies of bounded decision rationality using the logic of appropriateness ordi-
narily use qualitative methods; cases studies based on observations, interviews,
and surveys are staples. Cases also sometimes use quantitative data (Brehm,
Gates, and Gomez 1998). Syntheses combined with modeling, using that word
in the sociological sense, are common (Lipsky 1980; Yanow 1996). Stories and
narratives are common (Bellow and Minow 1996; Maynard-Moody and Leland
1999; Schram and Neisser 1997). But as noted earlier in the chapter, narratives
are prone to “fallacies,” and even “imperfect linear models” are better than intu-
ition alone (see Dawes 1979).
To illustrate the application of methodology to the study of decision the-
ory from the appropriateness perspective, we turn briefl y to the work of Steven
Maynard-Moody and Michael Musheno (2000). Th ey studied street-level workers
in police departments, vocational rehabilitation offi ces, and schools to discover
how these workers made decisions, particularly from the perspective of the de-
cision discretion available to them. Here is the description of their methodology:
Th e research that informs this discussion is based on extensive on-site observa-
tion, in-depth entry and exit interviews, a questionnaire, and archival research.
But street-level worker stories about fairness and unfairness are the primary
source for observations about decision norms. Like all methods, story-based re-
search has strengths and weaknesses. Stories reveal information that is rarely
found in interviews or especially in other quantitative forms of social scientifi c
information. Stories allow the simultaneous expression of multiple points of
view because they sustain and suspend multiple voices and confl icting perspec-
tives. Th ey can also present highly textured depictions of practices and institu-
tions. Rather than merely repeating the rules or beliefs, a story can show what
situations call for certain routines and how the specifi cs of a case fi t or do not fi t
standard practices. Stories illustrate the consequences of following, bending, or
ignoring rules and practices. Th ey bring institutions to life by giving us a glimpse
of what it is like to work in a state bureaucracy or cruise a tough neighborhood in
a patrol car. Th ey give research a pungency and vitality because they give prom-
inence to individual actions and motives. Stories are the textual embodiments of
the storytellers’, in this case street-level workers’, perspectives. (2000, 336)Using data gathered through a narrative methodology, they presented their
fi ndings in the form of contrasting models (they called them narratives). Th e two
dominant models of decision discretion are (1) the state-agent model, which ac-
knowledges the inevitability of street-level decision discretion but emphasizes