THE DECISION PREMISE: A BASIC

TOOL FOR ANALYZING THE ETHICAL

CONTENT OF ORGANIZATIONAL
BEHAVIOR

DEBRA W. STEWART
North Carolina State University

INTRODUCTION

Herbert Simon's image of "admistrative man" has pene-

trated deeply into scholarship on organizational behavior in
public organizations (Harmon, 1986: Chap. 6). Vital to the
formulation of "administrative man" is the concept of decision
premise. Decision premise stands as a central segment in a line
of reasoning that explains why people accept authority in work
orgemizations. As such, it is the key to understanding the ethical
dimension of organizational and individual choice.
In Administrative Behavior, Simon sees human choice as a
process of drawing conclusions from premises: "It is...the
premise (and a large number of these are combined in every
decision) rather than the whole decision that serves as the
smallest unit of analysis" (Simon, 1976:xii). [1\ Simon's
description of human choice stems from Chester Barnard's
classic analysis of organizational authority. Barnard saw
authority exercised when a person allowed his or her decisions
to be guided by decision premises provided by another person
(Simon, 1976:xx). In a work organization, an employee accepts
authority by permitting his or her behavior to be guided by the
decision of the superior without an independent examination of
that decision {Ibid., 11). The "zone of acceptance" defines the
boundaries of accepted authority. (Barnard had earlier referred
to a similar phenomenon as the "zone of indifference"
(Barnard, 1938:168). And yet, as Simon explains, any particular
{316) PAQ FALL 1988

decision is the product of streams of decision premises that

converge to influence the action decision-making of organization
members that creates the occasion for the exercise of authority
(Simon, 1976:xii, 110-151). So that, ultimately, the subordinate,
by accepting the decision, is implicitly accepting both the
stream of decision premises and the form in which they
converge in a particular situation.
The ethical content of organizational behavior refers to the
broad notions of right and wrong reflected in macro-level
organizational choices and in micro-level individual judgments.
Since the positivist approach ttiken in Administrative Behavior
assumes a fact-value dichotomy that sees value-laden state-
ments as non-cognitive and not susceptible to empirical or
rational testing (Simon, 1976:46), using Simon's concepts for
rational analysis of the ethicfd dimension of decision-making
requires some explanation. Ethical judgment has typically been
viewed by positivists as a problematic subject for rational
scientific inquiry. This clear separation of empirical "facts" and
normative "values" often is associated with a theory of ethics
which sees moral judgments as essentially emotional responses
to life conditions (Fisher, 1980:2) that are ultimately beyond the
reach of rational or empirical methods. In Simon's (1976:50)
view, scientific reasoning and investigations relate only to
"facts," ... "the decision making process must start with some
ethical premise that is taken as [given]." This article, however,
takes a different view by aligning with what is conventionally
known as the "good reasons" approach to moral philosophy.
The ' 'good reasons'' approach, informed by the works of Kurt
Baier (1966), Paul Taylor (1961), and Stephen Toulmin (1958),
assumes there is an informal logic to the way in which we justify
ethical positions. This logic has two elements: (1) that "we tend
to give reasons to warrant our moral positions and (2) that there
are ways in which we judge whether these reasons are good
enough" (Amy, 1983:4). Rational evaluations of moral positions
in this view depend, then, not so much on the evaluation of
moral goals or ends, but on the nature of reasons or arguments
used to support them (/6u2.). The argument of the "good
reasons" philosophy is that, in practical affairs, people do
reason about values. Though different from scientific reasoning.
PAQ FALL 1988 {317)

the activity is not merely the expression of subjective preference;

rather, choices are positions supported by reason (Fisher,
1980:90, 91). The work of these philosophers is based on the
ordinary leinguage approach of Wittenstein and examines the
ordinary language of moral deliberation and augmentation to
ascertain if there is logic or rationality in the way that we justify
moral and ethical positions. The argument is not that one can
prove empiricEd statements, rather that ethical judgment falls
in between purely emotional preference and empirically
verifiable facts. (Amy, 1983:5). This does not depart from
Simon's (1976:46) basic view that "factual propositions cannot
be derived from ethical ones by any process of reasoning..."
But it does departfromthe implicit message of the' 'fact/value''
dichotomy that scholarship should focus on the empirical or
factual dimensions of a situation while setting aside to another
time the "value" elements (Harmon and Mayer, 1986:141). The
"good reasons" philosophers take up those value elements for
analysis. This is this author's starting point for the development
of Simon's decision premise as a tool for analyzing the ethical
context of organizational decision-making.
Decision premises, their rank ordering, and their combination
can be systematically examined as reasons that result in a
decision. Viewedfromthis perspective, the "decision premise"
is just the conceptual tool a "good reasons" ethicist utilizes in
attempting to analyze the ethical dimension of management
decision-making. This can apply at the macro-level to the
analysis of broad organizational policies and routines. At the
micro-level, it is the tool for understanding the exercise of moral
choice for individuals in organizations. In each case, "decision
premise" serves as a conceptual tool to help sort the streams of
premises flowing into a final judgment. It does not sanction
certain ends a priori but, rather, it clarifies the reasoning behind
each stream of decision premises so that the reasoning itself can
be assessed.

MACROLEVEL DECISION-MAKING

At the macro-level, the "decision premise" describes the

reasons organizational spokespersons give for action of the
{318) PAQ FALL 1988

corporate body. To illustrate, this author takes the broad area of

selecting, developing, and evaluating people in a public agency.
Let's assume that an agency is confronted with the need to
implement a 10% reduction-in-force and that 50 employees
must be dismissed. Assume further that, in recent years, a
significant number of newly-hired employees were women and
minorities—groups previously largely excluded form agency
hiring. Further assume that the workforce is partially unionized
and that the personnel unit reflects the traditional civil service
values. What will affect how the agency chooses to implement
this reduction-in-force?
In formulating a policy for a reduction-in-force, the agency
may draw on premises emanating from any of three distinct
generic frames of reference broadly labeled collective negotia-
tions, merit, and equal opportunity. Each frame of reference
offers a coherent set of empirical statements about human
resources decision-making and an understanding of "the good"
that is associated with acting on each of these statements. The
actual outcome of the reduction-in-force decision process will be
determined by the frame of reference whose contents are most
heavily utilized. The final decision will be the result of a stream
of decision premises, factual premises, and value premises from
one or more of these frames of reference. Understanding the
moral basis of the reduction-in-force policy requires exploration
of each.
The first frame of reference from which premises may be
drawn is labeled collective negotiations (Stewart, 1984:14).
Factual premises contained within this frame of reference assert
that the growth in the size of organizations, increased bureauc-
ratization, deterioration of material emd social standing, and
changing economic and social conditions have intensified
employee incentives to band together in association to improve
their lot in work organizations (Levy, 1977:19). The incentive to
organize is inherent in the structure of capitalism for individuals
entering into contracts with employers to provide labor in
exchange for money. As individuals, employees are disad-
vantaged; collective bargaining rights are necessary in order to
give the employee the power necessary to ensure fairness in
negotiations with the employer about the employment contract.
PAQ FALL 1988 {319)

Consistent is the belief, however, that such a process is

necessary to redress an inherent imbalance in power between
employer and employees. These are the empirical or factual
decision premises.
The central value premises inherent in the collective negotia-
tions frame of reference assert that imbalance to power between
employer and employees is bad; that the ability to share in
decision-making that affects one's livelihood is a basic human
right; and that this process value should be deferred to,
independent of substantive goals, in any himian resource
decision-making (Stewart, 1984:15). Hence, it might be argued
that the RIF should be conducted on the basis of the time-
honored union rule of seniority, notwithstanding the impact on a
particular group or individual competence.
The second frame of reference from which decision premises
might be drawn is labeled merit {Ibid.). Again, the factual
premises are clear. Civil service reformers, in the 1860s and
1870s, saw merit as a vehicle for purifying a govemment riddled
by patronage and corruption. The reform logic made three
empirical assumptions: that govermnent employment was an
open arena where the best could prove themselves; that only the
best would produce efficient administration; and that the public
interest would best be served if the most highly-qualified would
govern (Rich, 1982:25).
The value premise inherent in the merit frame of reference is
a basic Aristotelian notion of procedural justice that calls for
treating all equals equally and unequals unequally. The good is
achieved by the institutionalization of standards that measure
individuals relative to capacity to perform a certain kind of work
and that sort out on that basis. According to this principle,
employees would be dismissed based on their performance
ratings, with the least competent leaving first irrespective of
seniority (Stewart, 1984:16).
Equal opportimity describes the third frame of reference
supplying management decision premises. Here again, the
factual premises are straightforward. The population is
composed of some groups who, because of race, sex, age,
physical or mental impairment or ethnicity, have historically
faced special barriers to full participation. This discrimination
(520) PAQ FALL 1988

was first seen as a series of isolated and distinguishable events,

attributable to the ill-will of individuals (U.S. Commision on
Civil Rights, 1981); later it came to be seen as the implementa-
tion of certain discriminatroy policies (height rules, etc.);
finally, it was viewed as a systemic condition that resulted from
the cumulative effect of a large number of practices and ways of
thinking that produced a cycle of disadvantages for selected
groups (Stewart, 1984:16).
The notion of the good embodied here is a concept of equality
which calls for breaking the cycle of disadvantage by producing
equality of result as a vehicle for achieving equal opportunity
ultimately. In the RIF policy, premises drawn from this frame of
reference would lead to a decision to construct a policy that
protected the employment of recently-hired minority group
members and women.
Conducting an ethical analysis of the ultimate policy decision
that an agency articulates first requires that we understand the
actual decision premises that stand behind a decision and
second that we assess these reasons as good enough in terms of
possible competing premises. "Grood enough" is not to be
judged by some empirical/scientific standard that would render
a "true" or "false" judgment. Rather, the standard of "good
enough'' is whether the premise is "... powerful and persuasive
or weeik and unconvincing" (Fisher, 1980:91) to an inquiring
community. In other words, understanding the goodness or
badness of human resource decision-making in a particular
organizational decision can be achieved by exploring the content
of these decision frames of reference and engaging in practical
deliberation about the normative conclusions to be deduced
from the factual evidence.
The characteristics of most human resource decisions in
organizations are: (1) they refiect premises drawn from one or
more frames of reference; (2) in a particular decision, the value
premises emfmating from one frame of reference are weighted
more heavily; and (3) the choice is based in part on how
compelling the factual premises are in a particular case.
Administrative Behavior broke new ground in formulating a
strategy for assessing the validity of the factual premises. As
noted above, however, value premises were set aside. The
PAQ FALL 1988 {32J

major challenge in management ethics today is to heighte

agency awareness of the content of the frames of reference fron
which controlling decision premises are drawn and to examine
whether these reasons are good enough. It does not bless
specific solutions as being good enough but it offers a strategy
for organizational self-assessment.

MICRO-LEVEL DECISION-MAKING

At the micro-level, Simon's notion of decision premise is a

basic tool for understanding the individual's relationship to the
organization. The characteristic of the subordinate role in an
organization is that "... it establishes an arena of acceptance in
behavior within which the subordinate is willing to accept the
decisions made for him by his superior. His choice is then
determined, always within the zone of acceptance, by his
superiors, and the relations of superior-subordinate holds only
within that area" (Simon, 1976:133). [2] The content of that
area is defined by the decision premises contained within.
Individuals accept certain sets of decision premises when they
join the organization—this constitutes their personal "zone of
acceptance." Ethical quandaries arise for individuals when the
rank ordering and weighting of values of an individual differ
from that of his/her superiors or when the conditions create new
issues that alter previously-held rank ordering or weights.
In order to make this discussion of decision premises at the
micro-level more concrete, this author focuses on the ethical
quandaries posed for individuals by the events leading up to the
space shuttle Challenger disaster. A study of the Presidential
Commission Report stimualtes two questions in this regard: (1)
what were the decision premises operating in the organizational
units central to this episode and (2) to what kinds of decisions
did these premises lead?

FACTS ON THE SPACE SHUTTLE DISASTER

The elementary facts of the story leading to the shuttle

disaster are well-known. The space shuttle Challenger began
Mission 51-L at 11:38 on January 28, 1986. Seventy-three
{322) PAQ FALL 1988

seconds later it ended in an explosion destrojring the external

tank and exposing the orbiter to ' 'severe aerodynamic loads that
caused complete structural breakup" (Presidential Commis-
sion, 1986:19). The seven crew members died in the accident. A
Blue Ribbon Commission, chaired by former Secretary of State
William Rogers, tried to answer a shocked public's questions.
The investigation revealed that, at the final point of decision to
launch, those who made the decision were not aware that, in the
inititil recommendation, the contractor had warned against
launching the shuttle at temperatures below 51 degrees Fahren-
heit, nor that there was a long and continuing history of problems
concerning the 0-rings seeds. According to the Commission
Report (1986:104), they didn't know because "...there was a
serious flaw in the decision-making process leading to the
launch of flight 61-L." Had the doubts about the solid rocket
booster joint seal "... been clearly stated and emphasized in the
flight readiness process in terms reflecting the views of most of
the Thiokel engineers and at least some of the Marshall
engineers, it seems likely that the launch of 51-L might not have
occurred when it did.''
What was described as a flawed decision process was
informed by a set of decision premises that defined the zone of
acceptance for the principal engineers. Reading the testimony
bearing directly on the decision reveals four premises, seeming-
ly understood, that constitute reasons enabling the final
decision. The premises surfaced in the testimony given about
three sets of discussions during a teleconferencing session in
the hours before the launch as participants of Kennedy Space
Center, Marshall Space Flight Center, and Morton Thiokel, in
Utah, evaluated the shuttle readiness information.
The first premise was that management judgment should
prevail over scientific or engineering judgment should the two
conflict. This is best illustrated in the teleconference discussion
that began at 8:45 P.M. when Mr. Mulloy, Solid Rocket Booster
Project Manager at Marshall asked Mr. Kilminister, Vice
President of the Booster Program, Utah, for a recommendation
on the launch. Mr. Kilminister responded that, based upon the
recommendation of his engineers, he could not recommend
launch. Mr. Hardy, Deputy Director of Science and Engineering
PAQ FALL 1988 {323)

at Marshall, responded that he was appalled by the Morton

Thiokel recommendation. Others in the Marshall management
structure indicated as well that they did not accept the
engineering rationale Morton Thiokel put forward for their no
launch recommendation. Mr. Mulloy asked them to consider
another possible rationale that would not have required launch
delay. At that point, the Morton Thiokel group went off-line in
the teleconference and discussed internally their recommenda-
tion.
In the Thiokel caucus, the engineers continued to voice
objection to launch. After a period of time, Mr. Mason declared
that the Thiokel group had to make a management decision and
from that point on the engineers believed they were excluded
from the decision-making process. Mr. Boisjoly, engineer on
the Seal Task Force, described the discussion after this point as
follows: ' 'There was never one comment in favor... of laimching
by any engineer or other non-management person in the room
before or after the caucus" {Ibid., 93). When the Thiokel group
went back on the network and gave the final recommendation,
Boisjoly reports, "I did not agree with some of the statements
that were being made to support the decision. I was never asked
nor polled, and it was clearly a management decision from that
point." In Mr. Boisjoly's view, this practice reflected a general-
ly accepted premise of working engineers: "I must emphasize, I
had my say, and I never [would] take [away] any management
right to take the input of an engineer and then make a decision
based upon that input, and I truly believe that. I have worked at
a lot of companies... and so there was no point in me doing
emything further than I had already attempted to do." Mr
Boisjoly felt, "I really did all I could to stop the launch." {Ibid.)
But he and other engineers recognized that the management
judgment would ultimately prevail over scientific and engineer-
ing judgment.
This first premise appears based upon a more fundamental
premise: that managerial judgment relies upon higher-level
principles in making decisions than does scientific/engineering
judgment. Although never made explicit, these principles were
external to the technology involved and gave priority to political
responsiveness and organizational goal-seeking. That premise
{324) PAQ FALL 1988

is best illustrated in two segments of the testimony. The more

dramatic occurs in the segment describing the dynamic that
unfolded when Morton Thiokol management in Utah asked to go
off-line to caucus internally during the teleconference. The
causus began and the engineers made their case against the
launch. After they provided input, the final management review
was conducted by Mason, Lund, Kilminister, and Wiggen, the
firm's managers in Utah. The purpose of this review was to
make a management decision in the face of the negative recom-
mendations from the Thiokol engineers and the perceived
pressure from management at Marshall to launch. Mr. Lund, a
member of the management group, had presented the detailed
evidence against launching in the first phase of the telecon-
ference and it was this information that provoked the "I am
appalled" from Mr. Hardy at MarshaU. As a starting point for
managerial decision-making, Mr. Mason, Senior Vice President
of the Thiokol Utah operation, instructed Mr. Lund to "take off
his engineering hat and put on his management hat'' {Jbid.).
Testimony indicates that "from that point on, management
formulated their points [on which] to base their decision..."
{Ibid.). Other testimony describes the final management review
as unemotional, rational discussion of the engineering facts as
they knew them at that time but also indicates that differences
of opinion as to the impact of those had to be resolved as a
judgment call and therefore a management decision {Jbid.). But
the only reasonable interpretation of management's decision to
ignore its own best engineering advice is that the role-switch
entailed adopting a set of rules for judgment that departed from
the engineering rules and tapped other criteria.
The rpemise that management had access to higher-level
principles than the dictates of engineering science seemed to be
working at the Kennedy Space Center as well. After the caucus,
the teleconference resumed and Morton Thiokol recommended
launching. However, Mr. McDonald, Thiokol's liaison for the
Solid Rocket Booster Program at Kennedy Space Center, argued
for delay and indicated that "... if anything happended he would
not want to have to explain to the Board of Inquiry {Ibid., 109).
He gave three engineering reasons not to launch but was told
"that it is not his concern and that his concerns will be passed
PAQ FALL 1988 {325)

on in an advising capacity" {Ibid.). Though the testimony is not

entirely clear on this point, it does appear that the rules for
judgment, at the managerial level, could not accommodate
negative engineering information from any source.
A third premise that appears to have been operating in the
decision process leading to the launching of the shuttle relates
to organizational loyalty. While the evidence here is primarily
the silence of engineering participants, loyalty to the firm seems
to have implied a willingness to suspend judgment when in
conflict with the management coedition. The acceptance of this
decision premise is one interpretation of an otherwise difficult to
explain event. Following the caucus in Utah where the
engineers to a person expressed opposition—some with a sense
of urgency—to the launch, Thiokol management came back
on-line with the recommendation to proceed with the launch. In
response to that recommendation, Mr. Stanley Reinhartz, a
manager at Marshall located at Kennedy for the launch, invited
dissenting opinions. According to testimony, "...He asked if
any one in the loop had a different position or disagreed or
something to that effect, with the Thiokol recommendation as
presented by Mr. Kilminster. There were no dissenting
responses" {Ibid., 100). Presumably, any one of the objecting
engineers could have responded. But, given the acceptance of
the first two premises, a loyal employee could not raise his voice
at this point.
Each of the three premises discussed so far, when evaluated
independently, may appear benign, yet each contributed to this
national disaster. These first three premises infected the group
with a kind of moral anemia that, when combined with a fourth
premise, turned a conventional engineering norm on its head.
An operating principle of engineers in the space shuttle
program had always been that the engineers' job was to prove
that the system was safe enough to go forward. In this case,
however, their role was reversed and they were challenged to
prove to management that the risk was too great for the launch
to proceed. The premise on which Marshall management and
eventually Thiokol management seemed to have been operating
was one in which the predisposition was to launch and it was up
to the engineers "... to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it
{326) PAQ FALL 1988

was not safe to do so" (Presidential Commission, 1986:93). One

engineer described the situation this way: "This is in total
reverse to what the position usually is in a preflight conversation
of a flight readiness review. It is usually exactly the opposite...
We were put in a position to prove that we should not launch
rather than being put in a position to prove that we had enough
data to launch'' {Ibid.). Of course the engineers did not have the
data to support the no launch position except to say that ".. .we
should not fly outside of our data base" {Ibid.). But they could
not present data demonstrating a direct correlation between
0-ring effectiveness and temperature and hence were powerless
to stop the launch given the shift in premises.
Over the years of the space shuttle program, a number of
forces converged to produce this shift. By 1985, NASA w£is
firmly committed to an overly-ambitious shuttle schedule as
a mefins of maintaining NASA's aura of success and its
perceived cost effectiveness. Both were seen as necessary to
ensure continued congressional support. This pressure was
expressed when the Marshall official urged the Thiokol
engineers to approve the flight. Thiokol, in turn, wanted to
accommodate a major customer. Driven by these external
forces, when Marshall management seemed to introduce this
revised decision premise regarding the role of the engineers,
the engineers did not reject it but were imable to give effective
voice to their concerns with this premise in place.
From the point of view of the iadividual, four premises
converged to shape responses. The first three premises were
accepted as part of business as usual in the space shuttle
program. The fourth premise displaced a long-accepted premise
that tempered risk in the past: that those managers who have
the ultimate authority to say ' 'go'' would act under the banner
of safety and public interest. But, in sorting through the streams
of premises that converged to yield this decision, one needs to
remember that, if the "zone of acceptance" that defined the
relationship of the engineers to management in the shuttle story
had not included the first three premises, the fourth premise
might never have displaced its predecessor. However, once
accepted that those in management roles should prevail over
those in engineering roles and that managerial thinking had
PAQ FALL 1988 {327)

access to higher-level criteria than engineering thinking, the

loyal employee was conditioned to accept this premise shift. In a
sense, these first three premises may have supported a trained
incapacity for moral judgment on the part of the engineers. The
incapacity left the engineers vulnerable to the shift in the fourth
premise.
In retrospect, the effect on the organization of the
convergence of these premises was to repress the clear moral
choice to cancel the launch. But the voice for the "cancel"
option was silenced by the final parameters of the "zone of
acceptance'' that defined the relationship between management
and non-man£igement participtmts.

CONCLUSION
The use of Simon's concept of "decision premise" clarifies
the reasoning behind the stream of premises that feed macro-
level organizational judgments. It also offers a framework for
describing a moral basis for individual actions. The decision
premises are the reasons that support decisions and therefore
actions. Rational evaluation of moral positions of individuals or
organizations depends on our ability to articulate tmd assess
those reasons.Whether reasons are "good enough" wiU be
answered only by drawing on other criteria for judgment:
utilitarian, consequentialist or perhaps a pluralistic combination
emd by crafting a convincing argtmient. But in the thorny ethical
process of drawing lines, the final judgment can only be reached
with the decision premise firmly in hand. In that sense, Simon's
concept of decision premise can become a fundamental tool for
ethical analysis of organizational actions. It facilitates the first
step in analyzing the ethical content of organizational behavior.

NOTES
l.This summary statement from the introduction to the third edition captures the
"technical innovation" offered in Chapters IV and V of the original text.
2. Simon changes Barnard's "zone of indifference" to a more positive "zone of
acceptance," where the individual "...sets himself a general rule which permits
the communicated decision of another to guide his own choices {i.e., to serve as a
premise of those choices) without deliberation on his part on the expediency of
those premises" (Simon, 1976:125).
 (328) PAQ FALL 1988

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