Sociology of Rational Decision Making (335-0-20)
Instructors
Bruce Greenhow Carruthers
847/467-1251
1808 Chicago Avenue, room 203.
Bruce Carruthers is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University and a Long-term Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. He works in the areas of economic sociology, comparative-historical sociology, and the sociology of law, with research funding coming from the National Science Foundation, the American Bar Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and the Tobin Project. His most recent book, published in 2022 by Princeton University Press, is entitled The Economy of Promises: Trust, Power, and Credit in America.
Meeting Info
555 Clark B03: Mon, Wed 11:00AM - 12:20PM
Overview of class
This course explores the role played by numerical and quantitative information in private and public sector decision-making. More than ever before, organizations produce and consume vast amounts of quantitative data. Such information informs economic and political decision-making at the highest levels. Quantitative data are said to enhance the precision, accuracy, rationality, and objectivity of decisions.
We will examine how quantitative data are produced and consumed in a variety of organizational contexts, what role they play in real-world decision-making, and why such data continues to make us nervous. What circumstances make it easier or harder to derive quantitative measures? Can such data be used to produce rational decisions, or simply to rationalize decisions? We will explore these issues using examples drawn from private and public-sector decision-making, and the world of "big data."
Learning Objectives
Students will have a much more sophisticated understanding of how quantitative information is created and processed, and how it enters into individual and organizational decision-making.
Teaching Method
lecture/discussion/student presentations
Evaluation Method
Students will be required to do a take-home assignment, a class presentation, and to participate in class discussion.
Class Materials (Required)
This course will have required books/other materials. This is a tentative booklist. Please confirm before purchase.
Theodore Porter, Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton University Press, 1995)
JoAnne Yates, Control through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management (Johns Hopkins, 1989)
James March, A Primer on Decision Making: How Decisions Happen (Free Press, 1994)
Other course readings will be available on Canvas.
Class Attributes
Social & Behavioral Sciences Distro Area