Disorder – in the eye of the beholder
Daniel Sarewitz’s new blog has some interesting observations from the First World Forum on Science and Civilization, including a conversation he had with Jerry Ravetz (known to readers of this blog) and the anthropologist Mary Douglass, about whether science is guided by aesthetic sensibilities, and questions this raises about rationality.
Hmmm – as I recall, this issue is sort of addressed by the GCM (no, not General Circulation Models, the Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice) in which disorder is in the eye of the beholder. For your reading pleasure, here, from my grad school archives, is a summary description I once wrote of that (after the jump):
The “Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice”, was originally developed by Cohen et al (1972) and most recently revisited by Warglien and Masuch (1996). In contrast with the pure rationality model, it suggests an alternative model of decisionmaking that resembles a primordial soup in which “preferences are unclear and ambiguous, goals are badly specified and incomplete… people do not know exactly what they want, what they wanted is subject to reinterpretation, and what they will want has yet to be learned”. As originally described by Cohen (1972) “participants arrive at an interpretation of what they are doing and what they have done while in the process of doing it. From this point of view, an organization is a collection of choices looking for problems, issues and feelings looking for decision situations in which they might be aired, solutions looking for issues to which they might be the answer, and decisionmakers looking for work.” Among the observations are that problems, solutions, participants, and choice opportunities do not necessarily follow a logical sequence — disorder may well be in the eye of the beholder and in the conception of choice.
In what is referred to as “parallel, emergent behavior”, complex patterns may result from simple interactions. “The logic is one of matching, of finding mutual correspondence and reciprocal support between the elements in the choice process”, which is accomplished through interaction in which a broader set of values and perspectives come to be considered. Decisionmaking under uncertainty is said to actually improve because solutions emerge as the problem is attacked from these multiple perspectives. For example, solutions and ideas may arise in the research process, which may be more effective when there is initial confusion — excessive early integration in a sequential plan of development steps may kill the most interesting and unexpected outcomes. It is considered a “parametric adaptive” model in that it takes the behavior of others as a parameter in a process of reciprocal matching between participants, problems, and solutions (Warglien and Masuch 1996).
It is also recognized that, even if people know what they want, they do not always behave consistently with their objectives because of organizational procedures, weakness of will, or by retrospectively establishing goals that rationalize decisions already made. A purely rational organizational design that ignores this is not merely false but may be the cause of misadaptation and ineffectiveness in bureaucratic organizations. It is important to distinguish formal and informal organizational structures in that, disproportionate emphasis on formal procedures (e.g., charts, rules, and management techniques) does not eradicate but instead shifts uncertainty to new areas of unpredictability and negotiation (Warglien and Masuch 1996).
Cohen, M. D., J. G. March, et al. (1972). “A garbage can model of organizational choice.” Administrative Science Quarterly 17(1): 1-25.
Warglien, M. and M. Masuch, Eds. (1996). The Logic of Organizational Disorder. Berlin, New York, Walter de Gruyter.
