The metaphor of the organization as a ``garbage can'' is intended as a playful insult. The Garbage Can Model concludes that ``organized anarchies,'' organizations characterized by unclear technology, problematic preferences, and fluid participation, make bad and unreliable decisions. However, management theorists in the 1970s and 1980s also saw a glimmer of hope through the Garbage Can Model's gloomy predictions. Moch and Pondy (1977), for example, propose that garbage can decision making could be robust to environmental ruggedness, ``the organizational equivalent of an all-terrain vehicle'' (360). In this paper, I explore the hypothesis that garbage cans can be adaptively rational organizational design. Using an agent-based computational model, I demonstrate how preference conflict and fluid participation in decision making promote effective search in uncertain task environments. I show that the political gridlock and unstable outcomes that emerge as a result of garbage can decision making -- the very features of garbage cans that make them perceived to be dysfunctional -- can facilitate short-term exploitation and long-term exploration of uncertain technical landscapes. In the medium-term, however, conflict stands in the way of the speedy ascent of local performance peaks, leading to degraded performance.
Application of Multicriteria Decision Making and Multi-Objective Planning Methods for Evaluating Metropolitan Parks in Terms of Budget and Benefits
