So what is an example of an organized anarchy?

Robert Birnbaum uses garbage can theory to describe the American college and University. He describes the University as a prototypical organized anarchy. And especially the faculty groups like departments and the academic senate. He views them not as decision making organizations, but meaning making ones. On page 439 of his paper, he says organized anarchies need structures. In the processes that symbolically reinforce their spouse values that provide opportunities for individuals to assert and confirm their status. And that allow people to understand to which of many competing claims on their attention they should response. They require a means through which irrelevant problems and participants could be encouraged to seek alternative ways of expressing themselves. So, the decision makers can do their jobs. They should also be able to keep people busy, occasionally entertain them. Give them a variety of experiences. Keep them off the streaks, streets. And provide pretexts of storytelling, and allow socializing. This is also drawn from [INAUDIBLE] The Social Psychology of Organizing on page 264 in that book. So here, we have this understanding that, organized anarchies within them. Our contacts for meaning making not consequence generators. So that's kind of an interesting aspect of organized anarchies that we within organization need these contacts so that we feel. Like we have reasons and identities for being there, and for addressing all kinds of concerns. Many of which may not be necessarily consequential or important to some groups over others. So that's the kind of perspective that we get from organized anarchy. And the places we see it are kind of in context like meetings, or faculty meetings, and those kind of settings. So now that we have some sense of where organizational anarchy can reside and, and the kind of general world

it is we can ask things like, what are the characteristics of organized anarchies? How do we know one when we see one? And here, we can kind of define an organized anarchy as having certain features. And in particular that the common things that people reference when they talk about organized anarchy's is that they have ill define goals, their contacts were goals aren't very clear Where preferences are problematic, and inconsistent, and there's multiple identities at play. So we're unsure what kind of problems matter in these context, many do, and people raise them. Second, they have an unclear technology, there's unclear consequences of each proposed solution or alternative. We don't know how to solve our problems. A lot of solutions we propose lack complete evidence. Third, there's fluid participation. People come and go. There's turnover in terms of who can be part of this choice arena. This arena for decisions. Then last The streams of solutions, problems, participants and choice arenas are constantly turning over and exist quasar independently. So those are the features of kind of an organized anarchy context and within it, organizations make choices by attaching solutions to problems subject to chance. And timing, and who happens to be on the scene to give them energy and voice. So, you notice I've said in a few cases here choice arena or choice opportunity, and by that I mean a decision situation. And a decision situation is like a garbage can, that's the metaphor that, that this theory uses, and it, it's like a garbage can into which various kinds of problems and solutions are dumped by participants as they are generated. A decision then happens when problems, solutions, participants and choices coincide. The timing is right and solutions are attached to problems. And problems are attached to choices by participants who happen to have the time and energy to

see them through. In short. Garbage can theories about the social construction of meaning that's attached to a choice. Let's take a little more careful look at each of the particular features within the garbage can theory. First, unorganized anarchy entails, what we call choice opportunities, and what John Kingdon will call policy windows. These are effectively meetings but they can also be groups that make decisions or, or have conferences of these issues occurring. and they basically were the opportunity to make a choice as possible and these choice opportunities and policy windows are often called garbage cans. And the meaning of a choice derives from how the trash is organized within that can or the mix of problems, solutions and participants, okay. Second we have flows and, and here there is distinct flows image three continual streams of trash flowing through each can It's all chaos within the garbage can. But we derive order or identify a choice in terms of the larger flows and their confluence, when they connect. So each stream flows relatively independent of each other so problems get generated in public opinion. Like educational crises of school shootings and exams. The international exam reports. Solutions are constantly generated by academics and vetted when their problem isn't even recognized yet, like character education or heterogeneous group class work. And participants come in go for other reasons. Like school boards turn over, teachers come and go with tenure or leave, or leave the profession. So let's look at each of these streams. The first stream of issues is or, is of issues and problems. And you don't need them to be real problems, or even important ones, they just need to be perceived as

problems by participants within the choice arena or within the meeting. Second we have streams of solutions. King [INAUDIBLE] policies but they really pertain to ideas, bills, programs, all the new solutions, standard operating procedures that are revisited and even change and they don't need to pertain to any existing problem. They can lead or lag problems. Third, we have streams of participants, or actors. and here Kingdon calls this stream politics. And it's what determines the, we, we ask, it's what, determines the presence of participants. And in the government arena, politics determines what actors show up and sh-, and what interests are represented. Even it if it good for you, you might pass up due to political concerns on a particular issue. So here we have streams of participants, right. Last we have an issue of choice opportunity being guided by timing so, often the choice opportunity is just not there. There's no meeting, no access, etcetera, or the right confluence of flows just hasn't occurred. And this is why timing the right moment matters so much. So those are the kind of the four feet dot three features and sub-features of garbage can theory.