Every choice we make – from a government deciding where to build a new highway to a company picking its next product – follows some kind of logic, even when that logic isn’t obvious. For decades, researchers studying how people and institutions actually decide things have found that there isn’t one universal method. Instead, several distinct models explain how decisions get made, each capturing a different reality. Some describe an orderly, step-by-step process. Others admit that real life is messier, shaped by limited information, cautious adjustments, fixed routines, and the tug-of-war between competing interests. Understanding these models helps you recognise which approach fits a given situation and why a “perfect” decision is often neither possible nor practical.
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The rational model: a structured path to choice
The most influential structured approach comes from Herbert Simon, the economist and political scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978 for his work on decision-making within organisations. Simon argued that a sound decision moves through distinct phases rather than happening in a single flash of insight. His original framework had three core stages, and later theorists added a fourth.
The intelligence phase comes first. Here the decision-maker scans the environment, recognises that a decision is needed, and defines the problem. This involves gathering data from inside and outside the organisation, checking facts, and understanding the context. A city planner, for instance, might review traffic data, citizen complaints, and population trends before concluding that a new flyover deserves serious consideration.
The design phase follows. Now the focus shifts to inventing, developing, and analysing possible courses of action. The decision-maker generates alternatives and tests how feasible each one would be. The choice phase is where one alternative is finally selected based on chosen criteria. Many later writers add a fourth review or implementation phase, where the selected option is put into action and its results are monitored. Importantly, Simon’s model is not strictly linear – there is a continuous flow from intelligence to design to choice, but at any point the process can loop back to an earlier phase for refinement.
Why “rational” doesn’t mean “perfect”
A crucial part of Simon’s contribution is that he rejected the older economic idea of a perfectly rational decision-maker who knows every alternative and calculates the single optimal choice. He called this unrealistic figure “economic man.” In its place, Simon proposed the concept of bounded rationality: real people decide under constraints of limited information, limited time, and limited mental capacity.
Because of these limits, decision-makers don’t maximise – they satisfice, a word Simon coined by blending “satisfy” and “suffice.” In other words, they look for an option that is good enough to meet their goals rather than searching exhaustively for the very best one. This is why Simon’s model fits public administration so well, where officials routinely face complex, poorly defined problems under pressure. His framework is most valuable for non-programmed decisions – new situations where the answer isn’t obvious – because the intelligence-design-choice sequence prevents hasty, intuition-driven choices.
The incrementalist view: muddling through
Not everyone agreed that decisions could or should follow such a structured path. Charles Lindblom, in his famous 1959 article “The Science of Muddling Through,” argued that the demanding requirements of fully rational decision-making were so unrealistic for most real decision-makers that people instead made choices through small, cautious steps. This approach is known as incrementalism.
Rather than designing grand solutions from scratch, policymakers begin with the policies that already exist and make limited adjustments at the margins. Lindblom originally called this “successive limited comparison.” His reasoning rested on two practical truths: decision-makers have real cognitive limits, and they face genuine conflicts over values. Given these realities, he argued it simply was not sensible to attempt comprehensive, all-knowing analysis. The test of a good policy, in this view, is often just the ability to reach a workable decision that the relevant parties can agree on.
Adaptability in changing conditions
The strength of incrementalism lies in its adaptability. Because each step is small, mistakes are easier to spot and correct before they become disasters. The approach learns by trial and error rather than betting everything on one master plan. As Lindblom developed his ideas, he refined them into disjointed incrementalism. The “disjointed” element captures the reality that in large governments there is no single coordinating brain overseeing every policy. Different departments work on overlapping problems without aligning their efforts – one ministry might tackle poverty through food programmes while another runs job training and a third manages housing subsidies. None of these is part of one rational master plan, yet together they make up government policy.
Lindblom also introduced the idea of partisan mutual adjustment, where policy emerges from negotiation and bargaining as decision-makers compromise and adjust to one another. He argued this fragmented method actually coordinates policy better than central planning in a political system full of diverging interests. Incrementalism is best suited to stable environments where radical change is risky and where many actors hold conflicting views.
Organisational and political models
A third family of models looks at how decisions emerge inside large institutions, where the personality of a single decision-maker matters far less than the structures and forces around them. These perspectives are closely associated with James March and the political scientist Graham Allison, whose 1971 study of the Cuban Missile Crisis showed that the model you use to interpret a decision determines what you actually see.
The organisational procedures view
The organisational model holds that decisions in large bodies are shaped less by fresh analysis and more by standard operating procedures – the established routines, protocols, and rules that an institution has built up over time. Allison’s version, the organisational process model, used the image of a quarterback rather than a chess player: the organisation can only call plays that are already in its playbook. The set of feasible options is restricted to what existing procedures allow.
This is bounded rationality made institutional. In a large government department, a junior officer does not reinvent policy every morning; file movement protocols, reporting relationships, and standard rules frame what can be decided, by whom, and on what basis. Routines make organisations efficient and predictable, but they also slow change and can make institutions react to new problems with old, ill-fitting responses.
March, along with Michael Cohen and Johan Olsen, took this further with the famous garbage can model, set out in their 1972 paper. They described certain organisations as “organised anarchies” marked by problematic preferences, unclear methods, and fluid participation – people drift in and out of decisions. In such settings, problems, solutions, participants, and choice opportunities float around somewhat independently and get coupled together almost by chance. A meeting called to discuss one issue might end up resolving something entirely unrelated, simply because the right people and ideas happened to be in the room at the same time.
The political view
The political model – what Allison called the governmental politics model – dispenses entirely with the idea of an organisation as a single unified mind. Instead, it argues that decisions are the product of bargaining among a group of players who hold different preferences, abilities, and positions of power. Each participant pushes for outcomes that serve their own organisational and personal interests.
A memorable phrase captures this view: “where you stand depends on where you sit.” A person’s position on an issue is predicted by the role they occupy. Bargaining then proceeds through give-and-take shaped by power relations and the rules of the game. A striking implication is that the final outcome may be one that no single participant actually wanted or chose – it is fabricated piece by piece through compromise, coalition, and competition. Because the process is dominated neither by one individual nor by purely expert reasoning, it can produce results that fail to fully satisfy anyone involved.
Choosing the right lens
None of these models is universally “correct.” Each is most useful in a particular context. The rational model works best when a problem is new and important enough to justify careful, structured analysis. Incrementalism fits stable conditions with many competing values, where cautious adjustment is wiser than sweeping reform. The organisational model explains routine, repeated decisions governed by established procedures, while the political model best illuminates high-stakes choices where powerful actors with clashing interests must negotiate. Allison’s key lesson was that using several lenses together gives a fuller, more honest picture of how a complex decision really came about than any single model can offer on its own.
What do you think? Looking back at an important decision in your own life or in an organisation you know, which of these models best describes how it actually unfolded – and would the outcome have been better if a different approach had been used?
References
- https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2992600&seqNum=2
- https://polsci.institute/perspectives-public-administration/herbert-simon-organizational-decision-making/
- https://www.atlas101.ca/pm/concepts/lindbloms-incrementalism-and-muddling-through/
- https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/incrementalism
- https://journalism.university/journalistic-writings/lindbloms-incremental-approach-public-policy/
- https://adambrown.info/p/notes/allison_conceptual_models_and_the_cuban_missile_crisis
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_can_model
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/bureaucratic-politics-approach
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