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This is the first lecture of week 4.It introduces you to the basic features ofdecision making and organized anarchies.Or what some will call garbage can theoryof organizations.During the week on coalition theory, Iusually ask students in myclassroom to assume the role ofdifferent organizations who have acontradictory stake.And an issue like that of the Milwaukeevoucher program.Then every group has a pairwise encounterwith eachother where they apply a variety ofexchange techniques.So as to try and forge adominant coalition behind certainsolutions like universal vounchers,targeted vouchers, magnet schools, morefunding,class size reduction or do nothing.Every year, the student groups do a great

job of playing to theirorganization's parochial interests andmanipulating other organizationsinto joining some sort of collectiveresolution.If we look at the slide next to me,we see a variety of stakeholders involvedin this process.from low-income parentswhere vouchers do not cover private schoolcosts.Middle class African-American parents withnearly

enough income to afford private school.To religious school leaders, principalsfor example, or local businessleaders and Milwaukee Secretary ofEducation and the teachers' unionrepresentatives.Each of these are stakeholders withdifferent parochial interests, and thenbelow there we had their kind ofsolutions, and the feasible solutions Butthey cannegotiate over in there pairwiseencounters as

the groups go through this process ofnegotiation.What they experience actually goes wellbeyondwhat coalition and exchange theories oforganizing convey.There's a much more dynamic quality tothere discussionsand decisions that seem more consistentwith an organized

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anarchy model seem to arise.What do I mean that the decision processresembled an organized anarchy?Well, for example, some of them have ahardtime coming up with their group's platformand identity.After all, what is the platform for lowerincome parents in Milwaukee?The case doesn't really convey.And it's not always clear what that wouldbe.Also, some of the group's proposedsolutions change over the course ofbargaining.Some initially propose universal vouchers,onlyto promote targeted vouchers in the end.Almost all the groups thought in terms ofsomekind of identity and parochial interest,and what that entailed.And they also thought about otheridentities and interests

when trying to manipulate the situation intheir favor.So they bargained for what they thoughtthe other group needed or wanted.Now, in this context, problems seem tobe brought up in a much more dynamic andcontingent manner.Some groups brought up problems that fittheir interests, like problem of choicefor Republicans.Equity for African-Americans, achievementlevels for businesses, while othergroups mentioned several kinds of

solutions, like the educators.And then they presented the problems indifferent orders.The same thing occurred for solutions.Groups created additional solutionsthan those presented in the Milwaukee cil,case.For example, some of the students came upwith a sliding scale voucher.And some solutions.They never took up actually in the processlike doing nothing.None of the solutions and problems seem to

arrive as set pairs.Instead, the solutions were matched withmultiple problemshere and there and that connection wasnegotiated.Each group tried to make a casewhy another group's problems would beaddressed bytheir solution.And as such the bargaining was in

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connecting solutionsand problems in a way that convinced overgroups.Or they undermined the connections thatother groups held.The debates and decisions also followed atemporal dynamic.Some of the students got up and went tothe restroomand their voice was lost in pushing forcertain problems and solutions.Some pairs of groups took longer to finishtheir exchange and were rushedto make a deal before the time was up, andthat seemed to affectthe kind of decision outcome.Some groups even backtracked on priordeals whenthey saw better solution and coalitionemerge later.Many students felt like the ordering ofthe pair wise meetingsgreatly effected which bargains arose andwhich ones were adopted or dropped.

A lot of what I just described here.Pertains to organized anarchy, andorganizational decision making in thosecontexts.This is also what some have called,a garbage can model of organizations.And this is what I'll talk about today, inour lecture.Most organizational theories underestimatethe confusion,and complexity, surrounding actualdecision making.If we look at an actual context of

decisionwaking, making, we notice that many thingshappen at once.Technologies or tasks are uncertain andpoorly understood, preferences andidentities changeand are indeterminate, problems,solutions, opportunitiesfor decisions Ideas and situations andpeople, all are mixed together in waysthat maketheir interpretation uncertain and theconnections between them unclear.

Decisions at one time and place have looserelevance to those at others.And solutions have only modest connectionto the problems presented.Moreover, policies that exist often gounimplemented.They aren't even brought up and decisionmakerswander in and out of decision arenassaying

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one thing and doing another.So with all this ambiguity, the story ofdecision making moves away fromconcession, conceptions of order.Concerning reality, causality, andintentionality, to conceptions of meaning.Here, the decisions that occur inorganized anarchy are seenas vehicles for constructing meaningfulinterpretions of fundamentally confusingworlds.They aren't outcomes produced by acomprehensible environment.Hence, as we increase the complexity ofdecisions situations so they movecloser to reality, they become meaningfulmeaning generators instead of consequencegenerators.So we have to ask at this point given thechaos, is thereany theory that would help us getbeyond interpretive detail contextualizeaccounts of ethnographies.And this is where we rely on the theory of

[INAUDIBLE].That describes organized anarchy in arelatively simple model.and it describes a more chaotic reality oforganizational decision making.So if we look here in the slide next tome, fromthe perspective of organized anarchy, anorganization is a collection of choices.Those are like meetings.Looking for problems, issues that they'regoing to deal with.And then issues and feelings, the sol, the

kindof problems or looking for decisionsituations orchoice meetings in which they can beaired.And then the solutions within those arenasarelooking for issues, for problems they canlatch to.and then decision makers are constantlylooking for work.So, one can view a choice opportunity ormeeting with

decisions as a garbage can into whichvarious kinds ofproblems and solutions are dumped byparticipants as they are generated.So, here we have the basic idea of CohenMarch and Olsen, which they called GarbageCan theory.Where within the garbage can we throw allthese problems solutionsand participants all these flows of things

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that collide in the can.And once that happens the particularjunctures under certain deadlines we havecertain kinds of decisions or decisionsthatare making sense of something and meaningmaking.Taken in broad perspective, garbage cantheory suggests thefollowing possible metaphor for decisionmaking within an organization.Now listen to this and follow the quoteto, next to mehere because it's very interesting tothink in terms of this way.Consider a round, sloped, multi-goal,goal soccer field on which individualsplay soccer.Many different people, but not everyone,can jointhe game or leave it at different times.Some people can throw balls in the game,or remove them.Individuals while they're in the game, try

to kick whatever ball comes near them,in the direction to goals they like, andaway from goals they wish to avoid.And how the balls fall.And what goals are reached, but the courseof aspecific decision and the actual outcomesare not easily anticipated.After the fact, they may look obvious.Right.And usually normatively reassuring.So this is basically what Jim March issaying, and you can imagine the kind of

field distorted in various ways.so that we see theseshifts into a different kind of, of game,and world full of complexity and dynamics.