Amish Dedication to Farming and Adoption of Organic Dairy Systems - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 232

respect to the management of organic systems makes it a particularly good case for
a bounded rationality framework approach, because it too provides a context that is
likely to make information, time and cultural constraints binding on fully informed
decisions. 6 Farmers, as decision makers, arguably often operate using a bounded
rationality framework in order to negotiate the complexities of difficult decisions
under uncertainty.
Both oikonomia values and bounded rationality factors can influence information
gathering when making adoption decisions. For example, Amish farmer decision-
making emphasizes working with your hands, which can be done with the family,
and de-emphasizes knowledge acquisition beyond what is needed for daily farm
tasks. “The wisdom of the world is foolishness with God” is a verse in Corinthians
that characterizes a view that many Amish hold with respect to acquiring knowledge
(Hostetler 1993 ). That is, the Amish may not maximize all of the resources and
information that might be expected by assuming decision-making based on an
idea of rational utility. In terms of knowledge acquisition, the Amish have been
portrayed as focusing on practical experiences in localized settings (Kraybill and
Olshan 1994 ). Value-based factors may thus influence how farmers seek or process
information related to farming organically.
The oikonomia -bounded rationality framework helps us describe Amish
decision-making with respect to farming in general and specifically concerning
the adoption of organic practices. The precise ways in which the bounded
rationality framework plays out may vary from one Old Order Amish settlement
to the next, even though they face almost identical socio-economic contexts and
choices. In discerning oikonomia-bounded rationality behaviors, we wrestle with
the ontological challenge of discerning what the farmers know about farming
systems given that we too as researchers operate under significant informational
constraints about individual farm operations. Perhaps the best we can offer here is
to demonstrate the range of bounded rationality behaviors that appears to guide their
choices. There are various oikonomia -bounded rationality behaviors that describe
how acquiring and processing information and attitudes toward risk and uncertainty
intersect with fundamental values in decision-making processes within Amish
communities and households.
We describe a continuum of behaviors that involve distinctive approaches to both
information gathering and the criteria that guide decisions. At the positive extreme
may be what is commonly called ambiguity aversion where information that can
help to address uncertainty is difficult to obtain (Epstein 1999 ), and some agents
may be averse to change as a result of this ambiguity or uncertainty. At the opposite
end, “extremetization” (Brock 2010 ) can occur when a decision-maker anchors on
a particular issue and makes broad generalizations out of extreme cases. Value loss
6 Since Simon first coined bounded rationality as a concept, there has been much empirical evidence
in support of this way of viewing decision making especially as compared to empirical evidence