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Now the outcome of choice arenas can vary. In many cases, no decision is made.

You can hold the meeting and no one agrees on a problem or solution. One idea after another is thrown out and under, undermined. So this is often the case of a lot of meetings. We've all been in those. Second in other instances, solutions that get adopted don't really address a problem. And this can arise in two ways. The first is by oversight. Or, what some call oversight. sometimes choice opportunities arrive and no problems are attached to them. All problems are attached to other choice arenas. So, in these instances people make choices and select solutions before even an issue or problem addresses or reaches that meeting. and this is the case of like and like, the case I'll show you later of where the school board and the administrators are pulled away by other problems besides the desegregation order. they get pulled away because of a teacher strike and they're focused on other concerns. The second way, is by flight. And here problems are affixed to choice opportunities for a while and exceed the energy of the decision makers that are attuned to them. So hence the original problem may move on to another choice arena, like another meeting or department. And these instances people wait for the problem to go away in order to make a solution or pick a solution. So in these cases you'll see people table a, a decision or send it off into a sub committee. In both of these instances. problems don't get attached to a solution. Now of course, the case we are most interested in as managers, of meanings and organized anarchies, is when a problem actually gets resolved. These are instances where problems are brought up and a choice opportunity, or meaning,

another decision makers attending that meeting, bring enough energy and ability to meet the demands of the problems. Here are choices made. And a problem is actually resolved. Each garbage can, choice opportunity, or median, has different access rules. In particular, every choice arena has an access structure, or a social boundary of sorts, that influences which persons, problems or solutions can enter or not. The most loose structure allows for unrestricted access. All the problems, solutions and people are allowed to enter. And this creates more energy but it also allows problems, solutions and participants to interfere with each other. Which increases conflicts and time devoted to problems. You have greater anarchy. And this is kind of the access structure you see at the bottom left, a democratic structure where everyone can enter every choice area. Another structure entails hierarchical access. Here important actors, problems, and solutions are given priority access. For example, big decisions may occur in executive meetings, while unimportant issues are addressed by rank and file employees and subcommittees. This might be the, the hierarchical image here, the middle one, where you see certain people get to access all choice arenas and others don't. Finally, there's a specialized access structure which can occur when specialized problems and solutions have access to certain meetings. Like in my school the costs students incur when printing their papers on school printers. That maybe an issue that goes to the school's technology committee. journal costs maybe brought up in the library committee. So, certain specialists had access to certain choices that fit their expertise so engineers get pulled into these technology committees. and the diagram at the bottom shoes these differing kinds of access structures where In the final image you see specialists going in a particular kinds of companies and

choice arenas. Another constraint influencing access to choice arenas are deadlines. Deadlines characterize temporal boundaries and the timing of decision arenas and [INAUDIBLE] flows into them. Here there can be constraints on the arrival time of problems. For example. Seasonal problems like the flu, or a cold like a what I must sound like right now from a stuffy nose. constrains on the arrival of solutions there're quite often we run solutions in programs on one in five-year plans. constrains in the arrival or participants. The timing of work days, school years, tenure cycles, determines turnover. And even constrains on choice opportunities or meetings like budget schedules. So all of this compounds to characterize decisions in organized anarchies. And decisions arise from the interaction of constraints, these access schedules and deadlines. And the dependent flows of problems or issues, solutions, and participants, or decision makers. So, we have this confluence of a variety of features, and a more dynamic characterization of the decision process. That somewhat resembles more closely the reality of decision making in many of the choice arenas of organizations. To this point, I've covered a lot of concepts in a short amount of time. Let's take the example of a faculty meeting again and work through the features I've mentioned and see what they look like. I think this example will afford you a more concrete sense. Of what the concepts mean and how to see and apply them in various cases of organizational decision making. Or rather in, in this case an instance of meaning making where a decision might not even be made. But people come to a deeper understanding of one another, their identities, where they stand, and what issues they're concerned about. And what solutions they're, they're energized about.

I'll probably riff some here on my own piecemeal experiences within faculty meetings, as well as kind of even meetings that I've had with my, with schools and with other organizations, or even with my kids' kind of schooling. But you can ponder some of your own experiences and choice arenas as well. So here's a, a massive diagram, and let me try to deconstruct what you're seeing. let's begin with some of the problems that might flow into an academic environment. one problem might concern space usage, right? So here we have a faculty meeting, that's the blue circle, a choice arena, and we have more people at Stanford than we can situate. And this problem of space usage might be relevant or brought up at the meeting, so p1, right? Another problem could be the need for additional money or resources. And whether the school has enough grant money to function, well this could be p2. other problems might concern a student advising issue. P3, a troublesome student that isn't graduating, or even a research center losing staff, p4, say. Or concerns about the university endowment and how it lost 1 3rd of it's value in the recession, p5 and how that might effect the particular faculty. So there're all these potential problems swirling in the environment and which ones enter differ. The blue circle again is the meeting, the arena. And let's say it's an executive committee where access is hierarchical, so, we see that only the dean and associate dean enter. And finally, we've all these solutions s1 could be a solution concerning minority recruitment. S2 could be a plan to increase master student enrollments. S3 might be a new tenure policy. And s4 might be an idea to find new donors for the school. And not all of them will enter the choice arena. And the agenda of the meeting might have a certain order and, and a

particular time frame of, say, one hour thereby imposing a deadline on the choice. So let's think about this. p1, if we look at p1 it, it doesn't really seem to go anywhere, it enters, it's brought up but it 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 to get enough energy to be decided, so the decision is by problem resolution. P5 is linked to p2, while they discuss p2. But the actors never see the endowment decline being solved by increasing enrollments. So the facility will tend to agree, the problem of not enough resources can be solved by increasing master students enrollments, thereby, increasing the funds got by tuition. So that's the kind of choice decision that occurs. P5 is ultimately unconnected to solution. So another decision by flight and then p3 and p4 never even brought up in the meeting before it ends. So the deadline affected their discussion. P1 through 5 could have affixed to the first solution. Right? About minority recruitment. as, but it didn't have any kind of support or relevance that wasn't related to that. if it had been picked without connection to a problem, then we'd say it was a decision by oversight. So hopefully, through this you have some kind of a idea of how the streams collide or enter into the garbage can. And how their ordering and dead line can matter. In this case space means just don't go anywhere but the concern about money and a function those school is something that the deans felt like was, was worthwhile in discussing that day. And they saw certain solutions over others like the increase in, in masters' enrollment as the most relevant. And that's where they went and selected.

Whereas others just didn't go anywhere. particular so, solutions may have been brought up but not really seen as connected to the problems being discussed. And eventually, like I said. the, the time runs out and the arena is closed, the window is done. With all this in mind and the concrete case behind us where we have some sense of how the concepts are applied, we come to the question of how do you manage organized anarchies? How do you manage this fluidity, this dynamic? how do we approach it, and there's several types of reactions that can emerge in response to a garbage can or an organized anarchy. First, a lot of individuals and managers try to be a reformer. They, they try everything they can to eliminate chaotic elements from decisions. So, they create greater systematicity, greater order, control, and in a way, this is what a lot of corporations do and it's what daily and Ballast did in the Chicago [INAUDIBLE] school case They centralized, rationalized, fixed streams in access, etc. Anything to remove those chaotic dynamic elements. Second though, you can go the opposite direction. you can be an enthusiast. Here you're trying to discover a new vision of decision making within garbage can processes. And this is sort of what March and Birnbaum argue people should do in choice arenas like a faculty senate. Here, or even facul, or any kind of meeting, here the manager needs to realize the planning going on is largely symbolic. It's an excuse for interaction and sense making. It's a way to make people feel like they belong, and to learn about views and identities of each other. The arena's more for sense making and getting observations than making decisions about much. Also, the managers, an enthusiast can view temporal sorting as a way to organize attention.

The order can indicate what's a more of concern for collective discussion. The enthusiast will also focus on the flows of problems and solutions and regard them as a matching market. Where energies and connections are mobilized recognizing who is present where links, time and energy are sufficient and then pressing the case is how you'll approach this kind of context as an enthusiast. Last, the enthusiast we'll see advantages and flexible implementation uncoordinated action and confusion. It's okay not to decide at times and to make choice arenas into a space of meaning making. That's how an enthusiast would view this and those kinds of organized anarchies. And then there of course is a middle route. You can be a pragmatist. you can use garbage can processes to further your agenda. the idea here is that organized anarchies are susceptible to exploitation. So as a manager, here you can time the arrival of solutions knowing attention is scarse. As such you can set the meeting agenda and work the order of issues. You put ones you want discussed up front. Put last the ones you know everybody already agrees they need and needs to be passed but you don't want them to stress too much detail. So you put them at the end of the agenda and rush the decision so that it's quickly done. another thing that you can do as a pragmatist is be sensitive to shifting interests and involvement of participants. Be opportunistic. and when certain people aren't at the choice arena. Press on issues and solutions you care about that they would oppose if they were present. Because if they're not there, you can mobilize in that direction. Third, you can, you can abandon initiatives that are entangled with others. If streams get tangled, if other problems are affixed to your solution.

then opposition is present, move on. view it as an opportunity to go to other issues. And if an agenda arises that doesn't suit your interests, overload the system to protect 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 choice opportunities, other meanings to attract decision makers and problems away from choices that interest you. In this way, you open up time for the issues you're concerned with. By that I mean you just create subcommittees, table things, send them elsewhere. So you have options on how you want to confront organized anarchy situations. Understanding how these arenas operate, afford you different levers to try and, hopefully, the ones related here give you some sense of how to win. I hope you find organized anarchy models useful. I find it especially helpful because it renders pathologies of choice. Theoretically consistent all to often real choice arenas are messy. And this theory embraces that mass and the dynamics and it affords us some kind of framework. For making sense of them. I find garbage can theory useful and especially helpful in explaining all sorts of meetings where there're ecologies of choice. And where problems and solutions are fluidly discussed. It fits policy, government, worlds, reasearch and development groups. Crisis management situations and most any distributed decentralized social system. Trying to deal with issues like a university department of faculty senate of partner meeting and so on. So I see this as, as actually a quite relevant theory in spite of what seems to be a lot of discussion about dynamics ambiguity. And meaning making. it does have quite a bit of applicability and relevance to you as both an analyst and a manager.

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