Transcription
In this video of Game of Theories, I’ll introduce the garbage can model of decision making. It is a theory that explains how organizational decisions are made in a highly ambiguous environment.
The garbage can model of decision making was first introduced in 1972 in the seminal article titled “A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice” by Michael Cohen, James March, and Johan Olsen. The article was published in the Administrative Science Quarterly. The garbage can model emerged to challenge the highly structured conceptualizations of organizational decision making within the traditional rational-choice models that dominated the management field at the beginning of the 1970s. The traditional theories of decision making, management, and organization at that point took as a fact the existence of well-defined goals, problems, solutions, as well as a substantial participation of the members in organizational decision making. But those assumptions often do not hold. By exploring decision making in a highly ambiguous environment, the garbage can model made a significant contribution to the organizational decision theory.
First, what is a garbage can in the garbage can model of decision making? It is a metaphor for the chaotic and unpredictable nature of decision-making in organizations. A garbage can is where decision makers chaotically dump problems and solutions. A decision is generated from this metaphorical garbage can where problems, solutions, and decision makers come together in a haphazard and unexpected way, rather than through a rational and systematic process. Think about a trash can we have at home. It’s messy and chaotic. This is similar to how decisions are made in organizations through a messy, chaotic, and unpredictable process.
A central construct of the garbage can model of decision making is organized anarchy, which refers to organizations or decision situations (also known as choice opportunities) characterized by high levels of ambiguity and chaos. How do we know if an organization is an organized anarchy or not? We look at three areas: (1) multiple, inconsistent, and ill-defined preferences; (2) decision makers having limited understanding of issues under discussion; (3) fluid participation of decision makers.
First, when decision makers have multiple, inconsistent, and ill-defined preferences, the goals of organizational decision making are ambiguous. Decision makers don’t have a coherent goal that guides their decision making. For example, a committee is formed to address a particular problem, but the members of the committee have competing priorities and agendas, and the meetings are unproductive. No decision is made. The problem remains unresolved. Another example is that a new superintendent comes to a school district and starts an initiative he implemented in a different school district in the past. But the initiative is not well-aligned with the current school district’s goals or capabilities. The initiative eventually fails in the new school district.
Second, decision makers have a limited understanding of the problems and solutions. They don’t, or have only limited skills, knowledge, and expertise to weigh different solutions and then select the best one from a set of alternative solutions. Here is an example. A department manager is approached by a consultant with a new solution to a problem that the department has been struggling with. The manager, who is facing a deadline for a different project, quickly adopts the solution without fully understanding it or considering other options.
Third, decision makers’ participation in decision making is fluid. Their decisions depend on what they pay attention to at a given time. Many things happen at once, all competing with each other for attention. This fluid participation then, in turn, influences decision outcomes. The fluid participation adds another layer of ambiguity to the decision-making process. For example, a new CEO takes over an organization and is driven by a strong desire to make a quick impact by introducing a new initiative. Then the CEO is distracted by other demands and doesn’t pay attention to oversight and accountability. The new initiative is ultimately abandoned one year later.
The garbage can model of decision making suggests that decision-making in organizations is a chaotic and unpredictable process, with decisions often being made in a haphazard and ad hoc manner, rather than through a rational and systematic process. To describe how decisions are made within the organized anarchies, the garbage can model details four independent decision streams. The first stream are problems. They are the issues and concerns raised by people both inside and outside of the organization and for many different reasons. For example, a CEO is getting a divorce and the media reports it. Now the board is presented with a problem: whether the CEO’s divorce will influence the stock price of the company or not. The second stream are solutions—that is, answers to the problems. Solutions could be ideas, policies, programs, and operating procedures. Solutions don’t need to match an existing problem. Decision makers can use the solutions in the garbage can to actively seek out problems that the solutions may be able to solve. The third stream are decision makers. They are organizational members who pay attention to the issues with the time and energy available to them. Decision makers have other demands on their time. Their participation in the decision-making process is fluid. They may also have different preferences for different solutions. The fourth stream are choice opportunities which give the organizations opportunities to act in ways that can be called decisions. The choice opportunities could be signing of contracts, hiring and firing employees, investing in a new company, and delegating tasks to different organizational members.
The garbage can model considers problems, solutions, and decision makers as three independent streams that are each generated separately, and flow disconnected from each other. These three streams only meet when the fourth stream of choice opportunity arises. As a result, a decision is generated from a garbage can, depending on the speed at which the garbage is collected and removed from the garbage can, for example, how long before problems, solutions, and decision makers move on to other choice opportunities, or, depending on how long the current choice opportunity remains available. For example, an unexpected crisis, such as a pandemic, occurs, and a decision is made in a rush without proper analysis or consideration of the long-term consequences.
The garbage can model is fundamentally different from rational choice theory which assumes rational outcomes, consistent sets of preferences, knowledge of alternative solutions, and a full capacity of the decision makers to calculate the probabilities of success of each course of action. But organizational decisions are usually not made in such a linear, coherent, rational, and predictable way. According to the garbage can model of decision making, the four streams are unrelated or only loosely coupled most of the time. They converge only when they happen to be simultaneously available at a specific point in time. This is because problems and solutions are thrown into the garbage can and become connected with each other by chance. This makes the decision-making process a result of random encounters, instead of a rational process. The decision-making process can be chaotic. Solutions could be proposed when there is no clear problem present. Decisions are sometimes made without any problems being solved. Other times, decisions are not made. Still other times, decisions are made, but do not address the problem that they were meant to solve. And those problems could persist without being solved.
The garbage can model of decision making explains the seemingly fortuitous and contradictory behavior in organizational decision making. It treats organizational decision making as a collective phenomenon, not an individual decision maker’s mental process. In doing so, the garbage can model adds extra complexity to organizational decision making by shifting decision-making processes from an individual process to a more macro, aggregated, organizational-level decision making.
After the garbage can model was proposed, it was criticized for amplifying the “anarchic” nature of decision making. A few years later, neo-institutional theory was proposed and complemented the garbage can model by describing how decision making may occur in a more organized manner. Regardless, a purely rational view is not the best theory to explain organizational decision making.
How the garbage can model of decision making was generated was actually a testament of the model itself. In 1968, Johan Olsen was a doctoral student in Norway and went to the University of California, Irvine as a visiting scholar. At that time, James March was both the Dean of the School of Social Sciences and a professor of psychology and sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Meanwhile, Michael Cohen was a doctoral student who was just beginning his work as a research assistant to James March. Since it was the last year for James March to serve as dean, the university conducted a search process to hire a new dean. But the search process ended with none of the potential candidates being chosen. And the head of the search committee ended up taking the position of dean. Johan Olsen observed the chaotic decision-making process throughout the search process. The topics that were previously considered to be important to the decision-making process, became less important, and were instead trumped by issues such as time constraints of the search committee members. For example, one search committee member was present in one meeting, but was absent from the following meeting due to professional travel commitments. Johan Olsen also observed that committee members gave each other head nods, and other non-verbal communication, in meetings, and thought about the possible communication, or miscommunication. The silence of the current dean, who was James March, could be misinterpreted by the search committee that candidates did not have the current dean’s support.
By 1972, three authors had all moved from the University of California, Irvine to Stanford University. James March took the position of professor. Michael Cohen was a post-doctoral fellow, and Johan Olsen a visiting professor. They worked together to develop the garbage can model and published the paper “A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice.” They later published more work on the garbage can model, such as "The Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice: A reply to Critics" in 1982 and "The Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice: An assessment" in 1995.
As researchers, how can we refine or challenge the garbage can model? Here are some ideas. How does artificial intelligence influence organizational decision-making processes? Does the garbage can model still apply when many decisions are made by algorithms? How does the garbage can model apply to different types of organizations, such as non-profit organizations, government agencies, and small businesses? How does the garbage can model work over time? Can we add another stream of time to the model? If so, how does it work? Those are the questions I’ve been thinking about. I don’t have answers yet. If you figure them out, please let me know.