So, what is an example of an organized anarchy? Robert Birnbaum uses garbage can theory to describe the American college and university. He describes a 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 and the processes that symbolically reinforce their spoused values that provide opportunities for individuals to assert and confirm their status. And then allow people to understand to which of many competing claims on their attention they should respond. They require a means through which irrelevant problems and participants can be encouraged to seek alternatives 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 streets and provide pretext of storytelling and allow socializing. This is also drawn from Wykes, the social psychology of organizing on page 264 in that book. So here, we have this understanding that organized anarchies within them are context for meaning-making not consequence generators. So that's kind of an interesting aspect of organized anarchies that within organizations need these contacts, so that we feel that 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 are kind of in context like meetings or faculty meetings, and those kind of settings. So now, we have some sense of where organizational anarchy can reside and the kind of a 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 is having certain features. And in particular, the common things that people reference when they talk about organized anarchy is they have ill defined goals. Their 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 contexts, 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 the solutions we proposed 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. And then last, the streams of solutions, problems, participants in choice arenas are constantly turning over and exist quasi 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 this theory uses and it's like a garbage can into which various kinds of problems, and solutions are dumped by participants as they're 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 and 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, an organized 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 have confluences of these issues occurring and they're basically where the opportunity to make a choice is 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. Second, we have flows. And here, there's distinct flows. Imagine, 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, 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 classwork. And participants come and 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 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 the participants within the choice arena or within the meeting. Second, we have streams of solutions. Kingdon calls these policies, but they really pertain the ideas, bills programs, old and new solutions, standard operating procedures that are revisited and even changed 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 presence of participants. In a government arena, politics determines what actors show up and what interests are represented. Even if it is good for you, you might pass up due to political concerns on a particular issue. So here, we have streams of participants. 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, etc. Where 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 three features and sub-features of garbage can theory. 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 undermined. So, this is often the case of a lot of meetings. We have all been in those. Second, in other instances, solutions that get adopted don't really address a problem and this can arise in two different ways. The first is by oversight or what some call oversight. Sometimes choice opportunities arrive and no problems are attached, 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 in the case I'll show you later of where the school board and administrators are pulled away by other problems besides the desegregation order. They get pulled away, because of a teachers strike and they're focused on other concerns. The second way is by flight. And here, problems are affixed to choice opportunities for awhile 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. In 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 decision or send it off into a subcommittee. And both of these instances, problems don't get attached to a solution. Now of course, the case we are most interested in as mangers of meetings and organized anarchies is when a problem actually gets resolved. These are instances when problems are brought up in a choice opportunity or meeting and then the decision makers attending that meeting bring enough energy, and ability to meet the demands of the problems. Here, a choice is made and a problem is actually resolved.
