PAD-3003 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Incrementalism, Administrative Behavior, Groupthink

• School: FSU
• Department: Public Administration and Policy
• Course: PAD-3003
• Professor: Jiasheng Zhang

Document Summary

Identifying causes: setting objectives, formulating alternative courses of actions, evaluating alternatives against organizational objectives, choosing the best course of actions. Rational model: assumption and main argument. Grounded in economic principles: scarcity of resources, perfect information, full knowledge of alternatives, and opportunity cost: some key points. Opportunity costs arise in all situations in which there are alternatives. Diminishing marginal returns: as you acquire additional units of anything, the added unit has decreasing value. Expressed in ratio terms (benefits divided by costs); performed on an ex- ante or ex-post basis. Boundedly rational model: assumption and main argument. Herbert simon argued that the rational model is unrealistic because decision makers have cognitive limitations and incomplete information: key points. Thus, de(cid:272)isio(cid:374) (cid:373)ake(cid:396)s a(cid:396)e (cid:862)(cid:271)ou(cid:374)ded(cid:863), leadi(cid:374)g to (cid:862)satisfi(cid:272)i(cid:374)g(cid:863). Ho(cid:396)t decision making time and a symmetrical information lead to satisficing behavior. Satisficing and incrementalism: assumption and main argument. Lindblom (1959) argued that individuals do not follow the rational model when making decisions concerning policy: key points.