IS Strategic Decision-Making: A Garbage Can View

Abstract

Developing information systems (IS) strategies and choosing the right IS portfolio for an organization require, among other things, identifying the most appropriate IS projects, determining how best to organize the IS staff, and arranging for IS procurement. All of these actions involve decision-making. This paper analyzes IS strategic decision-making in organizations, with the Garbage Can Model (GCM) of decision-making providing the theoretical framework. Our findings show that IS strategic decision-making often happens through GCM processes, and while these processes are hard to control and predict, the decision quality tends to be high at the organizational level. At the individual level, however, Garbage Can processes tend to return low-quality IS strategic decisions.

Learning in ‘Organized Anarchies’: The Nature of Technological Search Processes at Trade Fairs

“…Originally developed by Cohen et al (1972) to capture the often ambiguous and non-linear dynamics of decision-making in university settings, the model provides a useful framework for analyzing decision-making processes in a variety of settings that fit the basic criteria of so-called "organized anarchies". Indeed, over the past few decades, the "garbage-can model" has been used in studying many different organizational forms and contexts, including military organizations (March and Weissinger-Baylon 1986), policymaking and agenda-setting in the U.S. federal government (Kingdon 1995), the foreign policy choices of governments (Newmann 1998), public sector reform in Denmark (Bundgaard and Vrangbaek 2007), the "greening" decisions of businesses (Backer and Clark 2008) and strategic decision-making in information systems (Fardal and Sørnes 2008). Despite its demonstrated applicability in investigating a wide range of organizational forms in different contexts, the model has not yet been used to analyze the search and related learning processes of firms during trade fairs.…”

“…Trade fairs thus resemble a loose collection of ideas, where preferences are discovered through action rather than action being based on clearly-defined preferences. 3  The second property, unclear technologies, refers to the problem of selecting suitable technologies or processes to meet organizational goals (Fardal and Sørnes 2008). In the case of a trade fair, this means that participants often do not have precise ideas of how to select a technology, but proceed on the basis of "trial-and-error" and "pragmatic inventions of necessity" (Cohen et al 1972: 1).…”

ICTs and Network Relations: Exploring Knowledge Sharing and Coordination in Distributed Organizations

“…According to Locke, GT has proved especially useful to researchers investigating organizational topics like decision-making, networks, socialization, and change. In organizational studies in particular, the focus is on group and individual behavior, and this focus captures the initial locus and interactionist tradition of GT (Fardal & Sørnes, 2008;Glaser, 1992;Locke, 2001). This, combined with its analytical and structural properties, helps explain its popularity in organizational research.…”

Validation of Computer Simulations from a Kuhnian Perspective

“…, p. 83), researchers from organizational science have no such difficulties in relating to the Garbage Can Model in their case studies(Fardal and Sørnes, 2008;Delgoshaei and Fatahi, 2013).…”

“…5.2.2).10 This seems to be the standard case for applying the GCM in organizational science. SeeFardal and Sørnes (2008) and Delgoshaei and Fatahi (2013) for example. It will be interesting to see whether the more refined simulation models of the GCM that have been published more recently(Fioretti and Lomi, 2008) will bring about an increased use of simulation models in applied studies referring to the GCM or not.…”