The end result is an organizational program that affects such things as 

 personnel recruitment; the type and distribution of rewards and punishments 

 within an organization; job tenure; and the internal decisionmaking apparatus 

 of the organization itself. Those individuals and processes that do not fit 

 organizational rules of thumb are weeded out, and the programs developed for 

 goal attainment become even more entrenched. Programs are complex clusters of 

 organizational routines arranged to deal efficiently with day-to-day problems. 

 Thus, internal decisions tend to be based on the very selective collection, 

 generation, and distribution of information relevant more to the organization's 

 routine than to the issue itself. Each organization winds up with a set of 

 relatively parochial priorities and perceptions. Flexibility, however, is the 

 price paid for more certainty in decisions; organizational options are limited 

 in both number and character, and trade-off possibilities are usually ignored. 

 Many SOPs are not very useful, moreover, in new decision situations (Allison 

 1969, 1971). 



The context of the problem affects the type of information to which 

 decisionmakers are likely to be receptive (Ingram 1973). An organization 

 tends to develop, through its organizational processes, a particular "fix" 

 regarding the dimensions of the issues involved. Information is then select- 

 ively sorted out based on that conception, and information related to other 

 perspectives or new ways of viewing the problem is not really considered. 

 Indeed, Downs points out that decisionmakers tend to "... think in terms of 

 traditional or habitual categories which are often unduly narrow in relation 

 to their [real] needs," a bias that leads to the "one best way" approach to 

 problems. Alternative approaches or solutions are thus frequently not even 

 considered (Downs 1965). For example, water development projects, such as 

 dams, levees, or irrigation works were seen for so long as a means to stimulate 

 local economies that it was difficult to convince project developers of the 

 need to examine the environmental implications of these projects. The 

 "relevant" information included — and tended to be limited to — data on project 

 feasibility, benefits and costs, and the strength and unity of local support 

 (Ingram 1972). Environmental impact data, given this perception and context, 

 were "irrelevant." Furthermore, once an organization becomes committed to an 

 initial decision or approach, no matter how inappropriate it may be the organi- 

 zation will actually reject information that suggests alternatives (Rosenthal 

 and Weiss 1966). 



Thus, because of unflagging dependence on SOP's to define the range of 

 "acceptable" behavior and "relevant" information, an organization tends to 

 collect and evaluate the same type of data regardless of its ultimate utility 

 in persuading the other decision participants. SOP's provide stability in 

 organizations to be sure, and stand as decision rules that individuals and 

 organizations alike can rely on from one problem to the next, lending 

 continuity and certainty to the overall process (Mosher and Harr 1970). Many 

 internal organizational decisions are thus predictable. Knowledge of the ways 

 in which organizations typically make internal decisions — such as flow 

 recommendations — and the ways in which organizations tend to pursue goals, 

 provides a basis for making preliminary predictions about interactions and 

 outcome. 



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