1932

Abstract

Routines, protocols, and organization charts focus attention, structure cognition, and shape decision making. Participants in organizations, legal systems, and markets compare , deciding which protocol governs the treatment of each case in a stream. But situations vary in the extent to which thought and action are effectively governed by routines and standard operating procedures. In less structured or more chaotic situations, is an alternative form of analysis that shapes cognition and helps people make sense of otherwise uninterpretable events. Biography and narrative do their work by constructing the causal unity of objects over time rather than by constructing causation from a comparison across similar cases. Using examples such as critically ill infants, animals, heirlooms, the penalty phase of capital trials, juvenile justice, the lower criminal courts, religious relics, and cloth, the paper compares case and biographical analysis in organizations, legal settings, and markets, asking how these different ways of thinking come about and what follows from them.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.47
2001-08-01
2024-10-07
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/content/journals/10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.47
Loading
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.47
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Review Article
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error