decision making as rule following

See March, 1994, pp 57-58. When individuals and organizations fulfill identities, the follow rules or procedures that they see as appropriate to the situation in which they find themselves. Neither preferences as they are normally conceived nor expectations of future consequences enter directly into the calculus

Rule following is grounded in a logic of appropriateness. Decision makers are imagined to ask (explicitly and implicitly) three questions:

1. The question of recognition: What kind of situation is this?
2. The question of identity: What kind of person am I? Or what kind of organization is this?
3. The question of rules: What does a person such as I, or an organization such as this, do in a situation such as this?

Contrast with rational choice.