Conflict, Chaos, and the Art of Institutional Design

Scott C. Ganz ()
Additional contact information
Scott C. Ganz: McDonough School of Buiness, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20007; Economic Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC 20036

Organization Science, 2024, vol. 35, issue 1, 138-158

Abstract: The metaphor of an organization as a garbage can is often invoked as a playful insult. However, as was recognized early on by management theorists studying garbage can ideas, the unpredictability arising from garbage can decision making has the potential to be adaptively rational for organizations facing complex task environments. The chaos produced by preference conflict and fluid participation in collective decision making can aid in search by enabling organizations to escape local performance peaks or competency traps. The decades-old hypothesis that conflict and chaos could promote adaptively rational search, however, has largely been overlooked in research on organizational design. This paper uses an agent-based model to evaluate these competing views and, in the process, identify conditions under which garbage can decision making is adaptively rational for executives searching for high-quality strategies. I show that the biased and chaotic outcomes that emerge as a result of garbage can decision making—the very features of garbage cans that lead them to be perceived to be dysfunctional—can facilitate short-term exploitation and long-term exploration of uncertain technical landscapes when organizations engage in serial judgment of local alternatives if internal conflict over desired outcomes is not too extreme. I conclude that decision-making routines that encourage chaotic conflict are robust to bounded rationality and complex task uncertainty and thus should be included in the organizational designer’s portfolio.

Keywords: organizational design; organization and management theory; decision making and theory of the firm; power and politics; computer simulations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.1662 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:35:y:2024:i:1:p:138-158

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Organization Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().