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Executing `Decisions' in the Children's Hearings

Based upon observational and other data, this paper reports a study of `decisions' and `decision making' designed to describe the constituent activities of these notions in the context of the Scottish Children's Hearings. The starting point of the paper is a line of criticism which has cast doubt on the traditional use of many of the most central concepts of organizational analysis based, as they have been, upon a predominantly rational mode of organizational life. Rather than taking the central features of decision making for granted this paper reports the type of social activity which in practice in hearings is included by those present within the rubric of decision making, and the ways in which purposeful and meaningful activity is maintained in the light of problems that panel members face. Decision making is described as a flexible endeavour which is framed to manage uncertainty, to control the situation and to attain consensus. Original data are presented from fieldnotes on directly observed hearings. It is argued that this kind of study is a useful precursor to research which seeks to discover the causes and correlates of the `decisions' of those hearings.