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The question facing sociology is whether it is a field or a discipline. If it is a field, then there is no need for theorizing. However, if sociology is a discipline, then problem-solving cannot be disentangled from theorizing without a loss of intelligibility – the inability to explain the social as the concept of the discipline. Through the quasi-realism of problem-solving as a course of activity, this chapter presents cognitive sociology as a paradigm appropriate to the concept of the social understood as an ongoing course of activity. In doing so, it is shown how bounded rationality and expertise play a crucial role in how communication interacts with the division of cognitive labor, especially through the idea of representational representationality. Representational representationality is an idea that reveals how the degree of clarity among language, meaning, and thought is relative to the issues of audience and ignorance. Representational representationality is significant because it demonstrates how the relationship among meaning, language, and thought is subject to communicative errors – errors arising from a predicament of intelligibility and not merely arising from issues of computational skill, as described by Herbert Simon's model of bounded rationality and expertise in human problem-solving. The argument that follows from this shows how the means for adapting to ambiguity amounts to the difference between Simon's model and a quasi-real model in terms of its principle of rationality, principle of efficiency, and its cognitive style of problem-solving for deliberate practice. These dimensions are shown to effect what “examples” are good for in the problem-solving process, thereby revealing the politics of expertise. The politics of expertise demonstrates how the conflicts in sociological explanations of strategy are not merely conflicts that can be set aside as a pluralism of values. Rather, the conflicting explanations of theory and theorizing can only be resolved when the situational rationality of sociology as a discipline realizes the quasi-realism of problem-solving as a course of activity.

This chapter investigates the nature of the transformation of macroeconomics by focusing on the impact of the Great Depression on economic doctrines. There is no doubt that the Great Depression exerted an enormous influence on economic thought, but the exact nature of its impact should be examined more carefully. In this chapter, I examine the transformation from a perspective which emphasizes the interaction between economic ideas and economic events, and the interaction between theory and policy rather than the development of economic theory. More specifically, I examine the evolution of what became known as macroeconomics after the Depression in terms of an ongoing debate among the “stabilizers” and their critics. I further suggest using four perspectives, or schools of thought, as measures to locate the evolution and transformation; the gold standard mentality, liquidationism, the Treasury view, and the real-bills doctrine. By highlighting these four economic ideas, I argue that what happened during the Great Depression was the retreat of the gold standard mentality, the complete demise of liquidationism and the Treasury view, and the strange survival of the real-bills doctrine. Each of those transformations happened not in response to internal debates in the discipline, but in response to government policies and real-world events.

Despite extensive adoption of Simons’ Levers of Control (LoC) framework, there is still considerable diversity in its operationalization which impedes the coherent development of the literature and compromises its value to researchers. The purpose of this paper is to draw researchers back to the conceptual core of the framework as a basis for stable, consistent definitions of the domain of observables.

We derive the conceptual core of the framework from Simons’ writings. We highlight instability in existing operational definitions of the LoC, weaknesses in the extent to which these definitions reference this conceptual core, and inconsistencies in the restriction of LoC to formal information-based routines.

We draw on the inconsistencies identified to build the case for commensuration or a “common standard” for the framework’s use on two levels: the constructs within the framework (through reference to the conceptual core of the framework) and the framework itself (through explicit inclusion of informal controls).

We illustrate the benefits of commensuration through the potential to guide the scope of the domain of observables in empirical LoC studies, and to study LoC as complementary or competing with other management control theories.

Our approach to resolving tensions arising from inconsistencies in the empirical definitions of LoC differs from others in that we focus on the strategic variables underlying the framework to define the conceptual core. We believe this approach offers greater potential for commensuration at the level of the constructs within the framework and the framework itself.