Professor Reed,

Part of the problem of the notion of rational choice is that it presumes that action follows from preferences, when there is considerable scholarship suggesting that the opposite is quite frequent.

Your comments about preferences for rational choice are applicable to decision making in organizations. In academic organizations in the U.S., for example, there are constant management prescriptions for how decisions should be made, despite considerable scholarship supporting your own comments about the limits of rationality. I would be very interested in your views on whether the political preference for applying principles of rational choice is a uniquely Western phenomenon, or whether (and to what extent) it is also seen in non-Western organizational cultures ( particularly in Japan).

Robert Birnbaum
Miyazaki International College