The Moral Dimension by Amitai Etzioni

Author:Amitai Etzioni
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 1988-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

RATIONALITY EQUALS EFFORT

To seek the most efficient means to advance one’s goals, to act rationally, entails effort. The term “effort” is used here in a broad sense to include the commitment of resources, energy, time, and dedication. (It is much broader than the term “costs,” at least as both terms are usually understood. “Effort” encompasses such elements as developing self-discipline, and the mobilization of self or of the collectivity.) In contrast, entropy, the state of nature, is effortless. It involves no setting of goals and hence no selection of means; ongoing processes are not deliberately interfered with, but proceed like rivers flowing downhill. Similarly, to act impulsively in line with one’s prejudices, urges, or habits, in disregard of information, and without analysis or deliberation, requires little effort.

The efforts that rationality entails are of three kinds: (1) the search for effective means (including preparations for searching), to be referred to cognitive work ; (2) the development of personality, organizational, and societal foundations that are required to be able to undertake extensive search, and search that is relatively free from irrelevant constraints and interruptions; and (3) combining the maintenance of the appropriate resources, procedures, and institutions (e.g., computers, software and R&D staff, legitimation of science) with adaptation (the “updating” of the resources, to keep them responsive to the ever-changing environment). The differences among these three kinds of effort are briefly indicated for individuals, organizations, and societies before evidence is cited about the corelation between effort levels and rationality levels.

Cognitive Work

One kind of effort expected to be associated with the level of rationality is the commitment of resources to cognitive work that is needed to assemble, analyze, and apply relevant information. Cognitive work encompasses efforts expended directly on search behavior (for example, how many dealers an individual visits before he or she buys an auto) as well as efforts entailed in preparations (for instance, a new investor in the stock market may participate in an investment workshop before setting out to “search” which particular stock to invest in).

Cognitive work for a person may entail gaining access to specific items of information (for instance, purchase of a technical report), to general sources (for example, permission to use a library), or to informationprocessing technologies. For a corporation it may involve increasing its investment in R&D, or changing the staff-line ratios to increase the relative size of the staff. For a society it may entail increasing the reliance on a professional civil service, and reducing the role of political considerations in the selection of means.

The approach advocated here is one of subaggregation. Instead of attempting to answer the question of how rational “Man is”—the way the question is still often posed—the discussion here focuses on the extent various subcategories of people, organizations, and societies are more or less able to select means efficiently. A simple example, is that individuals with more education, especially technical training, are on average more able to render instrumentally rational decisions (in areas in which their special qualifications apply) than those with less preparation.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.