Abstract
An article on mixed-scanning as a “third” approach to decision-making, published in the Public Administration Review (December, 1967) which was awarded the William Mosher Award, generated a steady stream of discussion, criticisms, and applications but very little empirical research. The approach was developed in contrast to rationalist models of decision-making and to incrementalism. Rationalist approaches were held to be Utopian because actors cannot command the resources and capabilities rationalist decision making requires. Incrementalism was shown to overlook opportunities for significant innovations and to ignore the empirical fact that incremental decisions are often, in effect, made within the context of fundamental decisions. For example, once the U.S. embraced the Truman Doctrine after World War II, and decided to contain the USSR (rather than either allow it to expand or for the U.S. to attempt to free countries within the Soviet Bloc), numerous incremental decisions were made in Greece, Turkey, and Iran. However, these were implemented and guided by the fundamental context-setting decision, and cannot be properly understood without taking into account the basic decision.
The author is grateful to Janet Shope for research assistance.
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Etzioni, A. (1999). Mixed-Scanning Revisited. In: Essays in Socio-Economics. Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03900-7_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03900-7_6
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