The Garbage Can Model

Organizations are not problem-solving machines. They are arenas in which four loosely coupled streams flow independently and collide more or less at random: problems looking for forums in which to be raised, solutions searching for problems to attach to, participants wandering in and out based on competing demands, and choice opportunities that happen to be available. The decision that emerges from any particular collision is a function of which streams happened to be present at that moment, not of which streams were most relevant to the issue nominally being decided. Cohen, March, and Olsen developed the model to describe what they called organized anarchies — organizations with problematic preferences, unclear technology, and fluid participation. These are not pathological organizations but most organizations most of the time: universities, hospitals, government agencies, technology companies. AI adoption follows the garbage can pattern with textbook fidelity.