Section audio
Disembedded rationality refers to objective knowledge. ‘Objective’ knowledge refers to truths that remain true regardless of human activity. For example, the force of gravity pulls two pieces of matter together according to a set of laws. Those laws exist separate from human activity. They operate whether we know about them or not, and they remain unchanged regardless of our actions.
Disembedded rationality takes three forms: economic, technocratic, and bureaucratic.
Economic Rationality
Economic rationality is a means through which individuals make utility-maximizing decisions (that is, getting the most value for the fewest resources).
Current management thinking views organizations as utility-maximizing entities. In other words, people create organizations for a purpose (the utility they provide), and the objective of the organization is to fulfill that purpose for the least amount of resources. Economic rationality, thus, is a dominant approach in modern business thinking.
Technocratic Rationality
Technocratic rationality assumes the world (including humans) operates according to objective, natural laws. Through the application of the scientific method, practitioners understand these objective natural laws, which in turn allows them to optimize systems of human activity.
Those who rely on this form of rationality see organizations as means-end structures (that is, organizations exist to use certain methods to achieve a defined objective). Through scientific study, we can optimize the means through which organizations achieve their ends.
Bureaucratic Rationality
Bureaucratic rationality controls how individuals in organizations perform activities by defining and controlling knowledge through the following methods.
- Documentation: Bureaucracies use documents to classify and define objects, activities, and people (e.g. job descriptions, employment contracts)
- Boundaries: Bureaucracies define boundaries that classify who is responsible for which activity (e.g., finance department approves spending, teachers administer classroom lectures)
- Rules: Bureaucracies use rules to guide behaviour and reduce the unpredictability of human discretion (e.g., sales associates must reply to customer e-mails within twenty-four hours)
- Processes: Bureaucracies use processes to standardize how individuals perform activities (e.g., the process of taking an order at a coffee shop)
- Procedures & roles: Bureaucracies use procedures and roles to eliminate unpredictability by defining discrete roles within the organization responsible for different procedures (e.g., the Vice President of Marketing is responsible for overseeing all the company’s marketing activities).
Through bureaucratic rationality, individuals understand how an organization operates and how to get things done in that organization.
Thinking of bureaucracies as a type of rationality is counter-intuitive for many. Let’s look at an example to see how this works in practice.
Examples
Let’