Definition
The incremental theory of decisionmaking posits that decisionmakers use previous activities, programs, and policies as the basis for their decisions and focus their efforts on incrementally increasing, decreasing, or modifying past activities, programs, and policies (Dye 2013). This method of decisionmaking contrasts sharply with the rational model of decisionmaking which involves conducting a thorough analysis of all possible options and their consequences and then evaluating their advantages and disadvantages (Lindblom 1959). Instead, they rely on “successive limited comparisons” to simplify decisionmaking (Lindblom 1959, 81). Successive limited comparisons consist of comparing a limited number of options that are not too different from the current solution or practice (Kleindorfer et al. 1993; Beach 1997) and differ only marginally from each other (Pal 2011). According to...
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References
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Harris, G. (2016). Incremental Theory of Decisionmaking. In: Farazmand, A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_2996-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_2996-1
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