1. ‘Deferred Action’: On the Role of ‘Causes’ and ‘Reasons’ in the Case Method
INTRODUCTION
What is a cause? What is an effect? What is the relationship between cause and
effect? What is the notion of ‘causality’ that is presupposed in the case method?
These then are the four important questions with which we can begin to think-
through the ‘problem’ of causality in the case method. I use the term ‘problem’
here in the context of causality because the definition and modalities of causality
have been of interest to philosophers since the time of the pre-Socratics in the
ancient world. The simple model of cause-and-effect that is assumed through the
motion and interaction of particles in space works in the physical domain, but it
is difficult to obtain in other areas. The sciences – as opposed to humanities,
management, and the social sciences – have a stronger notion of causality
because there is something tangible about the physical world in the ontological
sense which is missing in these areas which work with concepts, ideas, and other
intangibles. While the cognitive schemas used in theory building are usually
based on the structures of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology, there is
still something fundamentally different in what non-scientific discourses, the so-
called ‘conjectural sciences,’ mean by ‘causality’ (Lacan, 1979a). The term ‘non-
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2. scientific’ is not to be misunderstood here as ‘un-scientific,’ but is defined as
discourses other than science, where it is difficult to demarcate ‘cause-and-effect’
with exactitude or infer the rudiments necessary to formalize a theory of local
causality where there is proximity in terms of both space and time. It was this
anxiety that Ludwig Wittgenstein called attention to when he differentiated
between ‘causes’ and ‘reasons’ within a theory of human action (Bouveresse,
1995). This essay then is an attempt to understand the differences between these
technical terms, and apply this process of differentiation in the context of a case
analysis in business schools. But, in order to do so, we must start with three
simple questions, in addition to those enumerated above; they include the
following: What are the contexts in which the notion of causality is taken up in
case analysis? Is the notion of causality being invoked correctly in these contexts?
Or is the term ‘causality’ being used metaphorically to mean something that is
closer to ‘reasons’ in everyday life?
RATIONAL DECISION MAKING
There is an important difference between doing something informally in
everyday life and taking a formal decision in a firm to do something. In everyday
life, we usually do things either because there are good reasons to do something,
or because there are compelling reasons to do so, or because we felt like doing
something, and not necessarily because we sit down, and do a formal decision-
analysis in order to justify the decision to ourselves, or to others who are
interested in our welfare. The difference between causes and reasons is
important for us here because case analysis is not a means in itself. If analyzing
texts per se is what we are supposed to be doing, then, we may as well stick to
literature or the scriptures, where a ready-made stock of texts is available for
interpretation. Case analysis therefore has to be understood as serving a different
function, which is defined as teaching the basic skill-sets involved in making
decisions in firms. The situation analysis, for instance, is only a prelude to a
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3. decision-making opportunity for the chief executive. The demand for rational
decision making, which is the usual theoretical platform in which decision-
making is discussed and taught in management programs, then, must
presuppose or invoke (depending on the situation), at least an implicit notion of
causality. In other words, decision makers usually use the term ‘because’ to
justify what they are doing. They might say something of this form: ‘I have
decided to push this option ‘because’ or ‘in response to.’ The objects of the terms
‘because,’ and ‘in response to,’ then, spell-out the relevant criteria of evaluation
depending on whether the decision is pro-active or reactive. This is common to
all decision-making situations. In the absence of spelling out the criteria of
evaluation of some sort or the other, there is a danger that decision making could
become ‘arbitrary’ and not attain the levels of rationality that is required to
justify a decision in public or to the stake-holders in a firm.
ARBITRARY DECISION-MAKING
The interest in rational decision-making then has nothing to do with
philosophical preoccupations in firms per se, but stems from the fear that the
alternative to rational decision making is ‘arbitrary’ decision-making (which
stake-holders justifiably fear since that will reduce certainty in the environment).
This, above all, is the fear that seizes firms in decision-making situations. When
the ideal of rationality was promoted as the cognitive model in the Weberian
notion of bureaucracies, the goal was not only to promote rationality in
organizational design and function, but also to avoid decisions that could be
termed ‘arbitrary’ through the invocation of rules, regulations, and precedents.
This is the aspect of decision-making that students understand quite well in
management programs since it promises them the sense of rational order that
they crave for. When they don’t understand the rationale for a decision, they
quickly invoke the term ‘arbitrary’ (or in its clipped form ‘arbit’). They might say,
for instance that: ‘It makes no sense. The decision is arbit, totally arbit.’ So, once a
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4. decision is classified as ‘arbit,’ they at least experience some sense of immediate
understanding. They understand that a certain percentage of decisions are
usually ‘arbit’ given the constraints of human nature, the structure of firms, and
the nature of power. The case analysis usually stops mid-way at this point, and
the discussants suddenly experience a sense of ‘learned helplessness’ (Abramson
and Seligman, 1978). The way out of the impasse of the arbitrary style of
decision-making, then, follows thinking-through the following options:
The decision is arbitrary, so there is no point in persisting with the case analysis.
The decision is not arbitrary but seems so because the situation was not analyzed
correctly.
The decision is partly arbitrary and partly not arbitrary.
If we analyze the case further, we will be able to correctly identify, and drop the
arbitrary part from the case analysis and get back on track.
Even if the decision is arbitrary, we have to live with it.
The last formulation of those given above is based on the sense of ‘learned
helplessness,’ which can be paraphrased with the formula: ‘Life is like that only!’
These then are the forms of helplessness and despair that emerge quite often in
the context of a case analysis. Those who think a case discussion is devoid of
affective content will be taken aback if they are not emotionally prepared to
encounter such affects amongst the discussants drawn from both MBA and MDP
programs.
LEARNED HELPLESSNESS IN CASE ANALYSES
It is easy for a case instructor to be affected by all this pessimism and lose heart
at this point in the classroom. The case analysis then moves from the locus of the
‘is’ to the locus of the ‘ought.’ The resolution that the case discussants come up
with here is that decision making ought to be ‘rational’ even if it is usually not
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5. rational, or will become rational when firms begin to take rational decision-
making seriously, even if they don’t do so now. This is then followed by a bout
of bad feelings and vulnerability since rationality is not yet in place. So then, lest
a blame-game start, the case discussants ask themselves whether they would
have done any better if they were in charge. The point that is being made here is
quite simple. If the cognitivist lure of rationality is not maintained, a case
analysis can simply collapse into either learned helplessness or become a blame-
game. The reason that case analyses are not as glamorous as discussants would
like them to be is linked to the fact that the emergence of learned helplessness is
sometimes inevitable. This doesn’t emerge in the first few days when the term
begins, but the moment fatigue and lack of adequate sleep sets in, it is followed
by mild or even severe forms of learned helplessness. Sustaining the momentum
of the case discussion; and, by implication, the case method, then, demands that
the instructor and the case discussants know how to negotiate an impasse such
as this when the lack emerges in the case method.
So whether or not there is any relationship between rationality and decision-
making in firms in principle, the assumption that there is, or ought to be, is a
fantasy that is structurally and pedagogically necessary to sustain a case
discussion, especially with students who come from science backgrounds; and
are, therefore, cognitivists by temperament. Otherwise, we will wind up with the
question that William Labov identified in his ethno-methodological inquiries
from his black informants in inner-city narratives in New York: ‘so what?’
Whenever this question is asked by the listeners, it means that the speaker has
not been able to establish the relevance of his narrative. So it is important that in
spontaneous narratives that constitute the vernacular, the speaker makes his
intention and the relevance of what he is saying known to his listeners. If that is a
necessary requirement in the vernacular, it is all the more important that the
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6. ‘give-and-take’ between the case instructor and his listeners should also follow
the same rule.
SKEPTICISM IS NOT CYNICISM
What must the instructor do when this lack emerges in the form of learned
helplessness in the case analysis? This lack, I argue, will usually take the form of
philosophical ‘skepticism,’ in the beginning, which is fine, since students will not
be able to learn to formulate questions effectively unless they are willing to go
through a skeptical phase. The problem though is that if the instructor is not able
to maintain a tight structure in the discussion by punctuating effectively, then,
skepticism will become a form of ‘cynicism.’ Cynicism is not the same as asking
‘so what?’ In the Labovian narrative, it is precisely because the informant is not
cynical that he is asking this question. But in cynicism ‘proper’ there is no
genuine quest for either meaning or relevance in the context of the case analysis.
The technique that I have tried to use to ‘punctuate’ the discussion, at this point,
is to tell the discussants that cynics are usually cynical about everything except
their own careers, place, and perks in a firm. If the point gets across, and
sometimes it doesn’t, there will be a problem. If the point gets across, then, the
case analysis is back on track. But, even if it does, case discussants want re-
assurance that the cynics will be pulled up in the firm so that the cause of
rational decision making is upheld both at the level of principle and at the level
of practice. What is going on here? What is the irrational thought pattern that is
intruding in the case analysis? Why does it become difficult to maintain the
necessary momentum here? I think it is possible to address these questions (that
affect the structure of a case analysis both from a theoretical and practical point
of view) by invoking the philosophical distinction between ‘causes’ and reasons.’
But, before doing so, here are a few notes by way of context. The analytic
difference between causes and reasons was introduced in the behavioral sciences
because the physicalist notion of causality was not fully applicable in
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7. psychology. When philosophers studied everyday decision-making, especially
the reasons that patients came up with in the context of the difficulties that they
had with decision making in neuroses, it appeared that they were systematically
conflating causes with reasons. Whether a patient was thinking of ‘cause’ or
‘reason,’ as a spur to decision making, or for difficulties that emerged in decision
making, required thinking through what he meant by the term ‘because.’
THE ‘PULSATIVE’ FUNCTION
So whether the patient is the agent, subject, or object of a decision, he is invoking
a notion of ‘causality’ in the context of a given situation analysis to understand
the relationship between different time-frames. The inability to differentiate
between causes and reasons is true for all of us because of the way things are, but
this problem can become an impasse in neurotic approaches to decision making.
While the philosophical critique of this distinction is working on the idea that
causes and reasons are differences of kind, a pragmatic resolution might be to
invoke it is a problem of degree and move on with the task of decision making.
In a neurotic impasse this is not possible. The inability to differentiate clearly
between ‘differences of kind’ and ‘differences of degree’ becomes at least a
reason, if not a cause for developing a model of rational decision-making. The
psychoanalytic resolution of this distinction between causes and reasons was to
argue that the problem arises in this particular way only if we define the
unconscious as ontologically alternate to consciousness. The problem can
however be addressed differently if we define the unconscious as ‘pre-
ontological,’ as Jacques Lacan does in Seminar XI (Lacan, 1979b).
This is all the more so in situations where different time-frames are being
invoked simultaneously on imaginary criteria making it thereby difficult to
differentiate between cause and effect with clarity. A pre-ontological notion of
the unconscious then means that it is not enough to understand the unconscious
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8. as a ‘structure’ but requires the notion of ‘structuration’ as well. In other words,
the unconscious does not ‘emerge’ as a fully-formed structure, but keeps
‘appearing’ and ‘disappearing’ (i.e. it ‘pulsates’) within the discourse of the
patient. The takeaway then is that we must have a revised notion of causality
that will fit the pre-ontological representation of the unconscious rather than the
ontological model that is pre-supposed in physicalist theories of matter within
classical mechanics. In the pre-ontological notion of causality, the arrow of time
is not linear but flies backward in a ‘retroactive’ construction of cause and effect
that is known as ‘deferred-action’ in meta-psychology. Or, rather, it is the
encounter with compelling ‘effects’ that prompts us to retroactively work out the
implicit levels of causation that are removed from the notion of space and time
built into classical mechanics; that is why psychoanalysts argue that causation,
by definition is not only ‘deferred’ but also ‘overdetermined.’ Understanding
causation during a treatment will involve exploring the many levels of causes
from different time zones in the patient’s unconscious. (Colby, 1958; Laplanche
and Pontalis, 1973; Meltzer, 1989).
CAUSALITY IN THE CASE METHOD
What then is the notion of causality in the case method? What is the difference
between ‘rationality’ and ‘rationalization’? What are notions of causality and
rationality that are pre-supposed in the problem of rationalization? How can the
breakdowns in case analysis be anticipated, handled, and repaired if we take the
trouble to understand the theoretical differences between causes and reasons? I
think the basic confusion in case analysis, especially amongst case discussants
who come into MBA programs from a science background, is that they have a
strong cognitive need for rationality in the sense of determining causes as
opposed to reasons for understanding why things are the way they are. When
they understand that decision-making modalities are being thought-through in
terms of the relationship between the criteria of evaluation and the evaluation of
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9. options, they feel that this is somehow not good enough while those with work-
experience will understand that even this model of rationality is difficult to
obtain in firms. Most decision making actually happens with implicit criteria in
addition to those with explicit criteria that are openly discussed. So even to get
decision-makers in firms to accept the need to formalize decision-making, or to
feel bad when they don’t do so is a major achievement on the part of the
regulatory structure that may be in place (given what we know about the
behavior of agents in the context of agency theory).
CONCLUSION
The sense of outrage however that the case method inspires in some people
relates to the fact that, in such moments of impasse, we have to rest content with
reasons rather than with ‘causes’ – let alone ‘Reason’ as the object of the human
striving for rationality. It can take any number of case discussions, and years of
work experience, before a case discussant can work-through this simple
difference between the role of causes and the function of reasons in thinking-
through a model of human rationality. That is why the notion of ‘satisficing’
becomes important in case analysis, since it relates decision-making to the
constraints that all decision-makers are subject to, especially in the context of
everyday life. It is therefore a good idea to differentiate between causes, reasons,
satisficing, optimizing, and the quest for reason in human life while teaching
cases where the impasse in the case analysis poses the danger of opening up the
unconscious of the discussants through forms of cynicism at worst and learned
helplessness at best. Otherwise, the case discussants will go away from the
discussion with a ‘falsetto’ notion of rationality, and find that neither firms nor
society is pre-occupied with decision-making in the rational sense that they may
have internalized in the classroom. Building skill-sets in decision-making in the
classroom, then, is not reducible to passing on an unexamined notion of the
rational; but, at the same time, it is not an excuse to avoid the task of thinking-
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10. through rationality altogether. The notion of ‘deferred-action’ is a way of coming
to terms with the gap between causes and reasons in not only a theory of
decision-making; but, also implicitly, in a theory of mind called psychoanalysis.
REFERENCES
Abramson, Lyn A. and Seligman, Martin (1978). ‘Learned Helplessness in
Humans: Critique and Reformulation,’ Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 87:1, pp.
49-74.
Bouveresse, Jacques (1995). Wittgenstein Reads Freud: The Myth of the Unconscious
(Princeton: Princeton University Press), passim.
Colby, Kenneth Mark (1958). ‘Causal Correlation in Clinical Interpretation,’
Psychoanalytic Clinical Interpretation (London: The Free Press, 1963), pp. 189-199.
Labov, William (1972). Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English
Vernacular, Vol. 3, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press).
Lacan, Jacques (1979a). ‘The Freudian Unconscious and Ours,’ The Four Fundamental
Concepts of Psychoanalysis, translated by Alan Sheridan, edited by Jacques-Alain
Miller (London: Penguin Books), pp. 17-28.
Lacan, Jacques (1979b). ‘The Subject of Certainty,’ The Four Fundamental Concepts
of Psychoanalysis, translated by Alan Sheridan, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller
(London: Penguin Books), pp. 29-41.
Laplanche, Jean and Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand (1973). ‘Deferred Action,’ The
Language of Psychoanalysis, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith with an
introduction by Daniel Lagache (London: Karnac Books), pp. 111-114.
Meltzer, Françoise (1989). ‘Unconscious,’ Critical Terms for Literary Study, edited
by Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughin (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press), pp. 147-162.
SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN
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