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Motives and Alignments

Response to Kimeldorf’s, Adut’s, and Hall’s Comments on Ruling Oneself Out

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Ivan Ermakoff
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Extract

Drawing on multiple perspectives and different analytic takes, Howard Kimeldorf ’s, Ari Adut’s, and John R. Hall’s comments raise three broad issues at the center of the agenda laid out in Ruling Oneself Out. The first issue concerns the motivational underpinnings of decisions reached in conditions of high uncertainty. The second draws the focus on the logic of the argument and its possible connections with models of organizational behaviors. The third points to the explanatory scope of the theory and the indeterminacy of the processes at play. In this article I address these critical remarks and, along the way, stake out claims and implications.

An argument about decisions cannot avoid delving into motivations and subjective perceptions. Several of Ari Adut’s and Howard Kimeldorf ’s comments focus on this issue. Adut draws attention to the possible effects of coercive pressures and pervasive expectations of retaliation in July 1940. In addition, his comments suggest that we should not downplay the significance of opportunism as a motive for endorsement.

Type
Special Section: Politics, Collective Uncertainty, and the Renunciation of Power
Information
Social Science History , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , Spring 2010 , pp. 97 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2010 

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