Rationality as the Basic Criterion for the Evaluation of Judgment and Decision-Making Processes

Björn Röber
Additional contact information
Björn Röber: University of Stuttgart

Chapter Chapter 2 in Escalation of Commitment in Internationalization Processes, 2018, pp 11-50 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Prior to an exploration of bounded rationality in internationalization processes of companies, it is necessary to take a closer look at the general matter of rationality in judgment and decision-making processes. This is because internationalization processes are shaped by a series of consecutive decisions based on the individual and organizational expectations of decision-makers. These judgment and decision-making processes should be based on rational grounds, or in other words, on an appropriate analysis of alternatives as well as on information processing. Rationality is the basic criterion for the evaluation of the plausibility of processual decisions. Yet, as already pointed out in the introduction of this dissertation, the actions of decision-makers and their expectations are not necessarily based on objective, fully justifiable grounds: Not only are managers working in difficult environments (particularly in the context of international business), in which they are confronted with imperfect situational contexts, e.g., lack of information, but they are also subjected to cognitive dispositions that trigger boundedly rational and even so-called irrational behavior. But in addition to potential limits of rationality there is furthermore the fundamental question of what rationality actually is. What defines ‘objective and fully justifiable’ grounds? In different contexts, the term of rationality is used by philosophers, theologians, mathematicians, sociologists, and economists. A clarification of this dissertation’s underlying understanding of rationality is therefore inevitable for a thorough analysis of bounded rationality in the context of internationalization processes. This clarification will be conducted in Sect. 2.1.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:mirchp:978-3-319-69102-2_2

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319691022

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-69102-2_2

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in MIR Series in International Business from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().