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Garbage-Can as an Intervention
Technique
Garbage-Can decision making is considered as a pathological process of
making decision. However, it is suggested in this article that Garbage-Can
situation can be used as diagnostic technique as psychoanalysis has been
used to understand psychological dysfunction in human behavior.
The classical assumption
of psychoanalysis is that
human psychological illness is buried in unconscious defences against
unacceptable urges; therefore, it provides opportunity to clients to have
insight into the motives of which they were formerly unaware through the
process of “free association.” In this process, clients not only
recognize various repressed thoughts, memories
and
feelings but they
also learn process of changing them.
The assumption of this
article is that organizational problems are the result of inappropriate
communication. Like "free
association" if we let all streams to come up freely on the surface of the
organization, probabilities are that the real problem could be
understood. How a garbage-can situation can be taken as organizational
treatment,
especially,
when this situation itself considered as an organizational pathology! If
we observe schizophrenic persons during their illness, they are unable to
control their thoughts, but association of thoughts in this period is not
considered as treatment. However, if a person jumps from thoughts to
thoughts in the psychologist's clinic, it will be considered a treatment
or technique for the treatment. Similarly, if a situation is deliberately
and systematically turned into a garbage-can it might help to understand
organizational problem as Selznick argues that the study of institution is
in someway comparable to the clinical study of personality. Although,
there are no evidence whether or not a garbage-can situation improve the
situation in the organization, we do have evidence like the case study of
"school in Copenhagen" that this situation let the hidden problem come to
the front stage. Therefore, we can say that Garbage-can can be taken as
organizational intervention technique in order to understand the real
organizational problem. It is assumed that
candid discussion leads participant to remove communication obstacles
which certainly affect on the organizational growth. |
