The garbage can model of organizational choice: An agent-based reconstruction

Abstract

We reconstruct Cohen, March and Olsen’s original Garbage Can model of organizational choice as a multi-agent system. We show that while some of the original results might be viewed as artifacts of particular modeling choices, the basic insights of the original model are confirmed over a wide range of experimental conditions. The simulation experiments confirm and extend some of the most interesting conclusions of the Garbage Can model: most decisions are made without solving any problem, the few problems that are solved generally pertain to the lower hierarchical levels and, consequently, the members of an organization encounter the same old problems again and again.