The Quest for Multidimensional Rationality through the Theory of Configuration

Abstract

Since the ancient Greek philosophers, the rationality concept has been defined as one of the main characteristics which distinguishes the humans from the rest of the animals. The Greek influence, such as that of Plato and Aristotle, and of empirical/rational philosophers such as Decartes and Thomas Hobbes, were the key factors for the models envolving the decision-taking proposed by Simon, Allison and Lindblon. The instrumental rationality model, the behavioral model, the organizational process model, the political model and the incremental model, along with the ten schools for strategy formation proposed by Mintzberg at alii. (2000), should be seen not as an excluding forme, but as a continuum which works in an interconnected form. This way, the present article renovates the multidimensional vision of man, initially approached by Aristotle and demonstrates the configuration theory as the best model for the construction of more competitive organizations.