ABSTRACT
This chapter turns the spotlight around from looking at how agency through speech acting gives content to actions and organizations. The investigation starts with Herbert Simon's classic answer to the question of how organization affects actors and action in them. The chapter examines Jim March, who took Simon's concept of bounded rationality into a theory suggesting that people within organizations act more on obligations and identities and on what is considered appropriate in their situation rather than on which actions most likely lead to fulfilment of specific tasks or intention. It looks into how the concept of rationality was handled in the Carnegie Tech School which became mainstream organization theory. The chapter also turns to neo-institutional and speech act theory of how institutions affect actors making decisions. It discusses how do existing institutions, both as rule systems and as functional institutions or organizations, affect reasoning and choices made in the gap and speech acting there.
