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Holistic Effects in Social Control Decision-Making

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Robert M. Emerson
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Abstract

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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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , 1983 , pp. 425 - 455
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 The Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

*

I wish to acknowledge the thoughtful comments and criticisms of the various drafts this paper has gone through provided by the following people: Daniel Glaser, James Holstein, Jack Katz, Sheldon L. Messinger, Mark Peyrot, Melvin Pollner, and Carol A.B. Warren. Richard O. Lempert deserves a special note of thanks for his extremely careful and sensitive editorial revisions.

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