Irrational rationality in organizational decision-making: sustainability discourses and material constraints of U.S. urban desert farmers

This study documents how urban desert farmers make sense of their organizational decisions as sustainable. This study collected interviews with urban desert farmers located in one metropolitan area in the southwestern United States. By employing a sensemaking theoretical framework, data analysis revealed two occupational Discourses (i.e. economic sustainability and environmental sustainability) in tension that were used to retrospectively rationalize farming decisions as sustainable. These sustainability claims were contextualized by gathering data on material sustainability practices through farm soil samples. As a result of the contradictions among sustainability claims and practices, this study presents the concept of irrational rationality—a discursive practice that blends decisional sensemaking and sensegiving about organizational members’ preferred definition of organizational reality. Analysis revealed that urban farmers utilized irrational rationality to both reduce cognitive dissonance created by material and discursive constraints on sustainability as well to establish a positive identity defense mechanism.