Microfoundations of Management: Behavioral Strategies and Levels of Rationality in Organizational Action

Abstract

Behavioral strategies are a potentially promising microfoundation of management research. Strategies involving processes of momentum, feedback, inference, and anticipation are already being investigated by organizational scholars, and evidence is mounting for each one. They are interesting because they can be seen as expressions of the level of rationality in organizational action, taking the organization as a stylized decision maker, and they also serve as windows into decision making processes and sources of puzzles that can guide direct investigation of decision making processes. The combination of evidence, consequential, and generative power for future research argue for giving behavioral strategies a role in the microfoundations of management theory.

Keywords: organization theory, strategic management, rationality, organizational learning, micro-foundations