Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice: Looking Forward at Forty

by Richard Harrison (Editor), Alessandro Lomi (Editor), Michael Lounsbury (Editor)

Overview

The year 2012 was the 40th anniversary of the publication of Cohen, March, and Olsen's influential article "The Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice", which offered a major new perspective on organizational decision making. To celebrate this enduring paradigm, its impact on our understanding of organizational decision making, and the broad streams of research it has influenced, this collection of papers provides a rich demonstration of the influence that the GCM is continuing to have on current research. The chapters make original contributions to research on organizational decision making by developing new models and theoretical extensions based on or inspired by prior garbage can work, by applying garbage can concepts and interpretations to new problems and novel settings. The book includes a paper from Cohen, March and Olsen, who record their memories of initial encounters with garbage can ideas of organizational decision making, impressions of their current condition, and some thoughts on convolutions they may experience in the years ahead.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780527123
Publisher:	Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Publication date:	11/11/2012
Series:	Research in the Sociology of Organizations , #36
Pages:	458
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 1.61(d)

Table of Contents

List of Contributors ix

Advisory Board xi

Part I Introduction

The Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice: Looking Forward at Forty Alessandro Lomi J. Richard Harrison 3

"A Garbage Can Model" At Forty: A Solution that Still Attracts Problems Michael D. Cohen James G. March Johan P. Olsen 19

Part II Preferences

Turn-Taking and Geopolitics in the Making of Decisions David R. Gibson 33

Mechanisms Generating Context-Dependent Choices Jerker Denrell 65

Chance, Preferences, and Predictions in Garbage Can Theory Jonathan Bendor Kenneth W. Shotts 99

Part III Decision Technology

Garbage Can Ecologies: An Agent-Based Exploration Guido Fioretti 141

Aspects of Garbage Can Processes: Temporal Order and the Role of Expediting Sridhar Seshadri Zur Shapiro 165

Garbage Can in the Lab Thorbjørn Knudsen Massimo Warglien Sangyoon Yi 189

Part IV Participation

Team Formation in the Garbage Can Klaus G. Troitzsch 229

Modeling Formal and Informal Ties within an Organization: A Multiple Model Integration Geoffrey P. Morgan Kathleen M. Carley 253

Situated Attention, Loose and Tight Coupling, and the Garbage Can Model William Ocasio 293

Structure, Skill, and Ambition in Organizational Problem Solving Thorbjørn Knudsen Nils Stieglitz Sangyoon Yi 319

Part V Organizations

From the Ivy Tower to the C-Suite: Garbage Can Processes and Corporate Strategic Decision Making Daniel A. Levinthal 349

Organized Anarchies and the Network Dynamics of Decision Opportunities in an Open Source Software Project Alessandro Lomi Guido Conaldi Marco Tonellato 363

Organizational Decision Mechanisms in an Architectural Competition Kristian Kreiner 399

Geopolitics and Garbage Cans: Understanding the Essence of Decision Making in an Interdisciplinary and Psycho-Cultural Perspective Mie Augier Jerry Guo 431