Theory and Practice in Policy Analysis, Chapter 15: government is a big complica
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Question
Theory and Practice in Policy Analysis, Chapter 15:
government is a big complicated system. Sure there is a person at the top that seems to be making decisions, but that person's decisions are the result of the information they get from subordinates and the options that are presented, both of which are filtered and affected by the whole organization. Sometimes the "decisions" of big organizations don't seem to make any sense, and there is a whole literature dedicated to understand how these organizations actually make decisions.
Answer the Questions below:
How is an "organization" different from an individual?
Are organizations rational, and if so in what ways are they rational?
Why did Allison develop these three Models of decision making - why not just one?
What is the Cyert and March idea of how a firm works and how is it different from a "rational" model?
The chapter supplies a large variety of theories and models of how organizations "make decisions" or "operate" - which of these do you find to be most correct or incorrect? Are they all correct in different ways?
What does all of this have to do with policy design?
Explanation / Answer
Organization is a group of people working together for a common goal and their actions are derived from the vision of the organisation. An individual is a single person who when compared to an organisation works on his or her own set of goals and is not dependent on any other person.
All structured organsiations are rational organisations where the people involved work for a common goal or goals. The system that is developed in a rational organisation is structured and all individuals follow the sytem to achieve their goals. A rational organisation assigns roles to individuals and asks individuals to perform their best in the roles assigned to them.
Allison developed the three models of decision making because not all situations are the same and the working process of an organisation is dependent on various other factors. While making three different types of decision making models, Allison has covered the most common factors which influence the workings of an organisation like the Organisational Process and Political Factor apart from the Rational factor which we discussed earlier.
The Cyert and March idea of how a firm works is largely influenced by the conflict of interests that come up while the decision making and the implementation of the same is done. When there is a conflict of interest, there is obvious reasons that a certain segment of individuals would not agree on the decision made and would be dissatisfied. In the case of rational model, a certain structure is set and individuals are asked to follow the organosational process rather than coming up with their own interests.
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