The Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice: Looking Forward at Forty

Abstract

The papers collected in this volume celebrate the 40th anniversary of “A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice” – one of the most influential and sustained attempts to represent organizational decision-making processes in a way that accounts for generally recognized but hard to accept features of organizational life. In our overview of the volume we emphasize ways in which the garbage can model (GCM) differs from more generally accepted models of organizational decision making. We suggest that future progress in linking the GCM to specific empirical settings might be facilitated by attempts to model explicitly the interdependencies connecting participants, problems, solutions, and decision opportunities in organizations. We discuss examples of current work in which this strategy is followed in a way that is consistent with the original spirit of the model. We present the overall organization of the volume and discuss how the various chapters contribute to the further development of organizational research inspired by ideas contained in the original GCM and in some of its more recent variants and critiques.

Citation

Lomi, A. and Harrison, J.R. (2012), "The Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice: Looking Forward at Forty", Lomi, A. and Harrison, J.R. (Ed.) The Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice: Looking Forward at Forty (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 36), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 3-17. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X(2012)0000036004