Revisiting the Unitary Actor Assumption: Toward Realistic Aggregation of Individual Preferences in Strategy Research

Summary

Csaszar's own current statement of how aggregation structures reshape collective preferences, and therefore the natural bridge from the paper's declared theory base to its design: unanimity approximates the pointwise minimum of member utilities and amplifies risk aversion, while polyarchy approximates the pointwise maximum and promotes risk-seeking. It supplies a formal mechanism for why the aggregation rule should move exploration and novelty rather than just accuracy, which is exactly the outcome dimension this paper claims benchmark studies miss. Citing the theory base's living author on aggregation structure is also a positioning asset for an ISR submission.

Contribution

Queued — not yet read.

Method

Queued — not yet read.

Relevance to RISE

Surfaced by the 2026-09-07 literature sweep as a high-priority candidate for the Architecture as Epistemology (ISR) paper (angle: aggregating LLM judgments; organization theory applied to AI agents). Verified against: Opened https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.20518 (arXiv abstract page; confirmed title, 2 authors Csaszar and Eklund, econ.TH, v1 24 Feb 2026, full abstract read). Search results also indicate a Strategy Science version at doi 10.1287/stsc.2024.0257 (not opened).

Critique / open questions

Queued — not yet assessed.

Key quotes

The long-standing unitary-actor assumption in strategy research -- treating firms as monolithic entities with coherent preferences -- misses that organizations are coalitions of individuals with diverse and often conflicting goals. (abstract)

Although behavioral perspectives have challenged this assumption, the field lacks an operational method for deriving an organizational utility function from the disparate preferences of its members and the specific structures used to aggregate them. (abstract)