Antirationalism

Conceptual Overview

Although antirationalism is not a term that is routinely deployed within the field of organization studies, it is [Page 61]a useful concept for understanding the philosophical attitude of a variety of scholars who have sought to criticize and supplant mainstream approaches to organization studies. The term antirationalism finds its origins in philosophy. In its affirmative form, rationalism is the view that reason should enjoy precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge and, in its strongest form, that reason is the only human faculty that facilitates individual and collective advancement. It is reasonable, the rationalist claims, to establish knowledge on the basis of beliefs supported by evidence rather than to rely on blind faith, superstition, institutional authority, or unfounded religious dogma. By uniquely prioritizing reason, however, rationalism plays down the importance of other faculties, such as those of the physical senses, emotion, intuition, or spiritual revelation. The prefix anti- within antirationalism thus implies an opposition to, or rejection of, rationalism. Antirationalism seeks to reintroduce and legitimize dimensions of experience that rationalism proscribes, thus opening up alternative sources of explanation and knowledge.

Modern natural and social science is based largely on rationalist principles and hence rationalism persists as a dominant philosophical influence on the contemporary academic world. Organization studies has not escaped this philosophical legacy. Although now profoundly multidisciplinary, the influence of neoclassical economics on the early development of organization studies, for example, has left a decidedly rationalist mark on the field both theoretically and methodologically. The rationalist orthodoxy of organization studies privileges the part played by reason in the analysis of behavior of and in organizations. It is often assumed that actors within organizations (or organizations themselves) behave in accordance with economic rationality. Such assumptions form the basis of an influential set of rational-choice models of organizational decision making. Early challenges to such models came from a group of organization studies scholars that included Michael Cohen, Richard Cyert, James March, and Johan Olsen. In a series of books and articles published individually and jointly during the 1950s and 1960s, these writers use empirical evidence and theoretical argumentation to question the appropriateness of applying economic assumptions in the analysis of organizational behavior. Not all the behavior of individuals and firms can be understood in terms of utility or profit maximization, they contend. It is necessary to replace the concept of maximization with that of suboptimal satisficing, for example, and to appreciate the bounded rationality of much organizational conduct. In short, there is a nonrational excess to organizational behavior that is marginalized or excluded when one applies neoclassical economic assumptions to its study.

The stirrings of critique represented in the work of Cohen et al. are important insofar as they presage a veritable proliferation of antirational critical positions during the latter half of the 20th century and beginning part of the 21st. It is possible to discern at least five modes of organizational critique within which antirationalism may be found: (1) feminist; (2) ecological; (3) postcolonial; (4) poststructural; and (5) postmodern. This is not to say that these broad categories are mutually exclusive—there are aspects of feminist and postcolonial critique present in certain forms of poststructural deconstruction, for example—but this simplifying taxonomy will aid explanation.

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