Concepts of Rationality in Management ResearchFrom Unbounded Rationality to Ecological Rationality

This paper sketches important concepts of rationality. It concentrates on bounded rationalityand provides descriptions of the heuristics and bias program and of the fast and frugalheuristics program by Gerd Gigerenzer and colleagues (Gigerenzer, 2002; Gigerenzer,Todd, & the ABC Research Group, 1999; Todd & Gigerenzer, 2000). One objective is tolink the underlying concept of ecological rationality in judgment and decision making withthe field of management research. This area has been mostly dominated with ideas of theheuristics and biases program coined by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (2000), withan emphasis of irrationality and lapses of peoples judgments and decisions. After an overviewof the historic development in this debate on rationality, this paper presents a sketchof the fast and frugal heuristic program as well as short impressions from two managementdisciplines in order to illustrate the fruitfulness. The paper concludes with the descriptionof dual-process models as a potentially unifying approach of both programs andtheir promising research potential.