On justification: Economies of worth (C

Understanding how actors can justify their behaviors in set-tings in which multiple and potentially contradictory logics exist and how they can reach legitimate agreements without resorting to violence has been a major recurring issue for administrative studies, from March and Simon’s (1958) research on the different motivations within an organization to recent research in institutional theory on institutional logics (Thornton and Ocasio, 2008). The ambition of On Justification is to offer a general framework for this purpose. Luc Boltanski, a sociologist, and Laurent Thévenot, an econo-mist, are both professors at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. They joined forces to develop a research program, the theoretical architecture of which they present in this book. They reject previous theories that emphasize relations based on power, interest, or violence