Holistic Effects in Social Control Decision-Making

Abstract

Most research on social control decision-making takes the individual case as the sole unit for the analysis of decision outcomes. Yet under a variety of organizational circumstances, social control agents process and respond to cases in relation to, or as part of, some larger, organizationally determined whole. This paper identifies three such larger units of cases found in social control decision-making—case sets, caseloads, and collections of cases grouped by the demands of establishing precedent and consistency—and suggests conditions which increase and decrease the effects of such holistic units on decisions made in particular cases.