The second theory we covered was also introduced in Graham Allison's work, and he calls this The Organizational Process model, which is almost like a bureaucratic kind of rule, procedural logic of appropriateness model. And here the question is, when does it apply again? And I think, it really applies when the organization's divided up into clear positions and routines, and when the problem can be modularized, that means it can be broken up and different units within the organization or different organization,s that specialize in that kind of subproblem can handle it. And they have particular routines or procedures in place for doing so. Now the general argument for the organizational process model is several steps here, which is first, you divide up the problem. So, any time you get a problem, like Kennedy did, he would divide up this potential for Armageddon, say, as having multiple components, right? And then he coordinates and activates organizational actors who have special capacities, that are situated in sub units or different organizations that have in place standard operating procedures that apply to these subproblems, right? And then you align, you max those subproblems to those units, and then you conduct sequential attention to your objectives. So, you make sure with each step of the subproblem it gets solved. And that it's being resolved by the available routines. So, that's a general argument of an organization process model. And what you would see, if you were to apply or recognize it in a firm that you're studying. Now the dominant pattern of inference here are the main. Means by which decisions are made in organizational action comes about is that you're queuing appropriate standard operating procedures that link or match particular problems and that when you do this, the action will be path dependent. Meaning, that it has inertia. The individuals and the team follows that set of operating procedure. So, that's the general inference, it's rule following and bureaucratic. Now as a manager of this, you really want to know the standard operating procedures of your firm. Which problems go, with which units, who cues them and controls them in those positions. And then you really want to think about improving the rules so that they match better with the problems. You really want to manage positions in standard operating procedures, that you drill, you practice those things, and you're prepared for a variety of them. And that you know that you have a good filing system and you know where to go in times of need. The third theory of the quarter we encountered in both weeks two and three, it was introduced as bureaucratic politics model by Graham Allison. And then later by Hoola and also James March as a coalition theory. A theory about how coalitions formed within organizations or across them. So, the first question is, when does this theory apply, again? And I think coalition theory applies when there are multiple actors with inconsistent preferences and identities. And none of whom can accomplish a task or accomplish a goal without the assistance of others. They have to pool things. They have to come together in some fashion. Now, the summary or the basic argument of coalition theory is that the participants involved occupy different positions. And they have parochial interests. Their conceptions of problems and solutions is quite different. Moreover, they have a variety of resources or chips that they can play in this game of bargaining, of trying to find an agreement. They may have expertise, money, they may have people. All those can be resources that can be bargained with. And then finally, there's a process of bargaining, right? So, you have people in different positions with their interests and they have it resources, kind of like, players with different sets of cards. And they have different goals they're trying to accomplish with their cards. And they enact the bargaining process and through this process they try to establish an agreement or a coalition that can get through this decision, okay. Now, the dominant pattern of inference here or the manner in which decisions come about or by which action comes about from the collective, a focused concerted collective action like an organization has. This comes about through political bargaining, right? And then finally, if you're a manager of coalitions, the things you kind of focus on are the bargaining processes. You've bargaining strategies that you tried to utilized. You log rule. Meaning, if you're going to vote, if you don't vote against me on this one, I won't vote against you on the next one, right. You horse-trade. You basically trade one thing for the other, right. You hinder the opposition's coalition formation. You try to undermine things when they go the way against what you want. And this accomplished by learning the interests of other groups or individuals or positions. In this kind of process, you learn their weaknesses, so you know what kind of leverage you would have over them, and then you basically manage this process by trying to bargain and leverage agreements out of various partners. So, it's pretty dynamic, it's very political and it has quite a bit of ethical kinds of concerns that we did talked about that week of the quarter and I think they still hold. And it's also kind of a temporary, coalitions are quite temporary, in a sense they come to a decision and once that decision's made they often fall apart. So, it's a different kind of theory and that was done in week three. The fourth theory that we cover in this class is called organized anarchies or garbage can theory. Garbage can theory applied when we observe independent streams of problems. There is a consistent barrage of problems maybe from the media and elsewhere. A variety of different solutions that come from say experts or from different interest groups. And then, participants who kind of come and go within these kind of choice arenas. And the choice arenas themselves kind of flow as well. There's punctuated moments at which decisions get made or even have the opportunity to occur. And they flow through as well. So, it's a very dynamic notion of decision making, that seems very anarchic. And if you encounter kind of that environment where it seems kind of very fluid and happenstance in terms of when a decision, and how depending on who's present and which things get connected to which. You've got unorganized anarchy situation. Now the basic argument of course, I kind of related already to some extent, which is that you have these choice arenas or windows of opportunities where decisions arise. And all these streams are kind of flowing through so the image to my side here that you've seen before conveys quite a bit of this. Where solutions come in some of them enter the garbage can, or the meeting, others do not. Certain problems get a fix, other solutions, etcetera. And depends on which participants. Some participants get called away to other meetings or cannot attend these meetings or these choice opportunities. So, there's this process of connecting problem solutions and participants. And they have deadlines, right? So often we don't cover everything, and they're full of bounded rationality, ambiguity, all kinds of things that make it closer and closer to a real decision context and all of its glorious messiness. The dominant pattern of inference in the case of this theory was that, it really came about the decision itself and organizational action from the collision of these streams in the can. You shake up the garbage can and whatever is connected to each other or glommed to each other is kind of the decision. And so it's kind of got this anarchic, kind of chance driven to some extent, or at least contingent model of decision making. If you're a manager of these kind of context, you have quite a few challenges. And I gave you some suggestions on the forum and in my announcements as to readings for this, particularly the new kind of a manager of these kind of distributed teams and fluid kinds of environments. Where you're kind of an embracing this garbage can or this anarchic kind of environment. And the various ways that you can deal with this is by timing when your solution is raised, so that you're sure to have maximum energy, all the right people are there. That if the cycle is right so that the right problems get affixed to this solution as opposed others. Like you don't want to raise your solution and certain problems when another problem that's more important starts to rise up in the media, and with everybody's attention on it. You probably as a manager want to abandon entangled initiatives. You don't want to take ones that are all gnarled up with all sorts of other things that will demobilize the process. And you want to be kind of strategic, you want to know how to basically overload the system as well, you want to not just look for good opportunities for your own decisions, but you also want to think of ways to undermine it when they go the wrong route. And so, here you can think of things like access and timing where you place things in an agenda and on it goes. And last, if you really fully embrace this kind of strategy as a manager, you want to think of meetings very differently in honest places to accomplish decisions but perhaps to get observations and understandings of each other where all or too often decisions just aren't made or at least minor ones and many are tabled. And that kind of perspective will probably help you as a manager in terms of thinking of it as a sense making process. One of constant anarchic procedures but ones in which we get to understand each other and have more buy in from participants who feel like they have a say in the process. In the fifth week of the course, we talked about organizational learning. And for many of you, this seemed like an ideal model of organizing, because it really applies well when you have an organization that has clear feedback loops. Seems to adapt routines so that people learn practices, real knowledge about implicit processes. That they remember what works right, that they have kind of an organizational intelligence, where adaptation and experimentation is valued so that the firm is constantly trying to actually apply things in other ways and learn from its success and failures so that it can continually improve upon its performance. So, it's a leaning organization. And so for a lot of us it was like, wow, this sounds like an ideal kind of theory and organisation. Now the basic argument of this theory is that you can accomplish decisions and action really, by focusing on natural practices and the effort to continually improve those practices. So, you need to remember and improve upon whatever kind of outcome that's central to your community, to your technology core. And what it proposes is that this is done by creating both a community of practice where you have lateral ties among all the participants within the firm where they actually share and communicate and diffuse that kind of knowledge about best practices. But also through networks of practice that extend out from that firm to other firms where they learn about Global Maxima, or better ideas that may be persisting or being created in other firms and they can translate them back down to the local level of your own firm. And this kind of reflects an organizational intelligence, so to say. And so that's the general argument, or this the outlook of this theory in a very coarse character. Now, the dominant pattern of inference are the way in which action actually comes about through this theory, is that you inspect practice, you assess its returns to the organization. And you do all this through this constant iteration of interaction in the community of practice that's local collaborations, as well as these kind of external network searches into the environment. And as a manager of such a firm, the kind of things you want to do to encourage this kind of behavior is to create lots of lateral ties between the workers, so that knowledge gets passed and transferred more quickly. Lot of you remember the case of the Xerox workers where having them sit by each other at the same desk next to an expert was a better way of diffusing that kind of practice, that knowledge of expertise, that wasn't readily accessible through a manual of rules. In addition, another way to do this is to create organizational memory through all kinds of say even a website or a listserv or what have you, a catalog. You can also do other things like create applied social learning experiences where you send people off for professional development as an entire team. Where they actually apply, simulate, roleplay, a variety of the same practices. And then last, you want to value improvisation, you want to make it so that communication and knowledge sharing and constant discussion and reflection on practice is nurtured. And if you create that kind of context in theory you have kind of a learning organization. So, that's the general gist of this theory.
