4 - 5 - lecture 10 - organized anarchy - part 3 [without face - 15_20]

8/13/2019 4 - 5 - Lecture 10 - Organized Anarchy - Part 3 [Without Face - 15_20]

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another decisionmakers attending that meeting, bringenough energy andability to meet the demands of theproblems.Here are choices made.And a problem is actually resolved.Each garbage can, choice opportunity, ormedian, has different access rules.In particular, every choice arena has anaccess structure, or a social boundaryof sorts, that influences which persons,problems or solutions can enter or not.The most loose structure allows forunrestricted access.All the problems, solutions and people areallowed to enter.And this creates more energy but it alsoallowsproblems, solutions and participants tointerfere with each other.Which increases conflicts and time devotedto problems.You have greater anarchy.

And this is kind of the access structureyou see at thebottom left, a democratic structure whereeveryone can enter every choice area.Another structure entails hierarchicalaccess.Here important actors, problems, andsolutions are given priority access.For example, big decisions may occur inexecutive meetings, while unimportantissues are addressed by rank and fileemployees and subcommittees.This might be the, the hierarchical image

here, the middle one, whereyou see certain people get to access allchoice arenas and others don't.Finally, there's a specialized accessstructure which can occurwhen specialized problems and solutionshave access to certain meetings.Like in my school the costs studentsincur when printing their papers on schoolprinters.That maybe an issue that goes to theschool's technology committee.journal costs maybe brought up in the

library committee.So, certain specialists had access tocertain choices that fittheir expertise so engineers get pulledinto these technology committees.and the diagram at the bottom shoes thesediffering kinds of access structures whereIn the final image you see specialistsgoing in a particular kinds of companiesand


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choice arenas.Another constraint influencing access tochoice arenas are deadlines.Deadlines characterize temporal boundariesand the timing of decision arenas and[INAUDIBLE]flows into them.Here there can be constraints on thearrival time of problems.For example.Seasonal problems like the flu, or a coldlike awhat I must sound like right now from astuffy nose.constrains on the arrival of solutionsthere're quite often we run solutions inprograms on one in five-year plans.constrains in the arrival or participants.The timing of work days,school years, tenure cycles, determinesturnover.And even constrains on choiceopportunities or meetings like budgetschedules.

So all of this compounds to characterizedecisions in organized anarchies.And decisions arise from the interactionof constraints, these access schedules anddeadlines.And the dependent flows of problems orissues, solutions,and participants, or decision makers.So, we have this confluence of avariety of features, and a more dynamiccharacterization of the decision process.That somewhat resembles more closely thereality of decision

making in many of the choice arenas oforganizations.To this point, I've covered a lot ofconcepts in a short amount of time.Let's take the example of a facultymeeting again and workthrough the features I've mentioned andsee what they look like.I think this example will afford you amore concrete sense.Of what the concepts mean and how to seeand apply them in various cases oforganizational decision making.

Or rather in, in this case an instance ofmeaning making where a decision might noteven be made.But people come to a deeper understandingof one another, their identities, wheretheystand, and what issues they're concernedabout.And what solutions they're, they'reenergized about.


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I'll probably riff some here on my ownpiecemealexperiences within faculty meetings, aswell as kind of evenmeetings that I've had with my, withschools and withother organizations, or even with my kids'kind of schooling.But you can ponder some of yourown experiences and choice arenas as well.So here's a, a massive diagram, and let metry to deconstruct what you're seeing.let's begin with some of the problems thatmight flow into an academic environment.one problem might concern space usage,right?So here we have a faculty meeting, that'sthe blue circle, achoice arena, and we have more people atStanford than we can situate.And this problem of space usage might berelevant orbrought up at the meeting, so p1, right?Another problem could be the need for

additional money or resources.And whether the school has enough grantmoney to function, well this could be p2.other problems might concern a studentadvising issue.P3, a troublesome student that isn'tgraduating, oreven a research center losing staff, p4,say.Or concerns about the university endowmentand how it lost 1 3rd ofit's value in the recession, p5 and howthat might effect the particular faculty.

So there're all these potential problemsswirlingin the environment and which ones enterdiffer.The blue circle again is the meeting, thearena.And let's say it's an executive committeewhere access is hierarchical,so, we see that only the dean andassociate dean enter.And finally, we've all these solutions s1couldbe a solution concerning minority

recruitment.S2 could be a plan to increase masterstudent enrollments.S3 might be a new tenure policy.And s4 might be an idea to find new donorsfor the school.And not all of them will enter the choicearena.And the agenda of the meeting might have acertain order and, and a


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particular time frame of, say, one hourthereby imposing a deadline on the choice.So let's think about this.p1, if we look at p1 it, it doesn't reallyseem to goanywhere, it enters, it's brought up butit isn't decided on before any solution[INAUDIBLE]it's decision by flight.P2 on the other hand.Connects ours linked to solution one, a1,a2, all length and toget enough energy to be decided, so thedecision is by problem resolution.P5 is linked to p2, while they discuss p2.But the actors never see theendowment decline being solved byincreasing enrollments.So the facilitywill tend to agree, the problem of notenough resources can besolved by increasing master studentsenrollments,thereby, increasing the funds got by

tuition.So that's the kind of choice decision thatoccurs.P5 is ultimately unconnected to solution.So another decision by flight and then p3and p4never even brought up in the meetingbefore it ends.So the deadline affected their discussion.P1 through 5 could have affixed to thefirst solution.Right?About minority recruitment.

as, but it didn't have any kind of supportor relevance that wasn't related to that.if it had been picked without connectionto aproblem, then we'd say it was a decisionby oversight.So hopefully, through this you have somekind of a ideaof how the streams collide or enter intothe garbage can.And how their ordering and dead line canmatter.In this case space means just don't go

anywhere but the concern about money and afunction those school is something thatthe deansfelt like was, was worthwhile indiscussing that day.And they saw certain solutions over otherslike theincrease in, in masters' enrollment as themost relevant.And that's where they went and selected.


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The order can indicate what's a more ofconcern for collective discussion.The enthusiast will also focus on theflows ofproblems and solutions and regard them asa matching market.Where energies and connections aremobilized recognizing whois present where links, time and energyaresufficient and then pressing the case ishowyou'll approach this kind of context as anenthusiast.Last, the enthusiast we'll see advantagesand flexible implementation uncoordinatedaction and confusion.It's okay not to decide at times and tomake choice arenas into a space of meaningmaking.That's how an enthusiast would view thisand those kinds of organized anarchies.And then there of course is a middleroute.

You can be a pragmatist.you can use garbage can processes tofurther your agenda.the idea here is that organized anarchiesare susceptible to exploitation.So as a manager, here you can timethe arrival of solutions knowing attentionis scarse.As such you can set the meeting agenda andwork the order of issues.You put ones you want discussed up front.Put last the ones you know everybodyalready agrees they need and needs

to be passed but you don't want them tostress too much detail.So you put them at the end of theagenda and rush the decision so that it'squickly done.another thing that you can do as apragmatistis be sensitive to shifting interests andinvolvement of participants.Be opportunistic.and when certain people aren't at thechoice arena.Press on issues and solutions you care

aboutthat they would oppose if they werepresent.Because if they're not there, you canmobilize in that direction.Third, you can, you can abandoninitiatives that are entangled withothers.If streams get tangled, if other problemsare affixed to your solution.


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then opposition is present, move on.view it as an opportunity to go to otherissues.And if an agenda arises that doesn't suityour interests, overload the system toprotect your interest.Bring up other problems and solutions.Slowing the process and making it complex.Demobilize things in that way.You can also provide other choiceopportunities, other meanings toattract decision makers and problems awayfrom choices that interest you.In this way, you open up time for theissues you're concerned with.By that I mean you justcreate subcommittees, table things, sendthem elsewhere.So you have options on how you want toconfront organized anarchy situations.Understanding how these arenas operate,afford you different levers totry and, hopefully, the ones related heregive you some sense of how to win.

I hope you find organized anarchy modelsuseful.I find it especially helpful because itrenders pathologies of choice.Theoretically consistent all to often realchoice arenas are messy.And this theory embraces that mass and thedynamics and it affords us some kind offramework.For making sense of them.I findgarbage can theory useful and especiallyhelpful in explaining

all sorts of meetings where there'reecologies of choice.And where problems and solutions arefluidly discussed.It fits policy, government, worlds,reasearch and development groups.Crisis management situations and most anydistributed decentralized social system.Trying to deal with issues like auniversitydepartment of faculty senate of partnermeeting andso on.

So I see this as, as actually a quiterelevant theory inspite of what seems to be a lot ofdiscussion about dynamics ambiguity.And meaning making.it does have quite a bit of applicabilityandrelevance to you as both an analyst and amanager.

4 - 5 - lecture 10 - organized anarchy - part 3 [without face - 15_20]

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