5 - 9 - Lecture 8 - Exchange and Coalitions - Part 1 [10-11]

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    In the second week of the course, you gota good sense for how rational actorperspectives and organizational processperspectives differed.Those theories nicely corresponded withJim March's notions of decisions by thelogic of consequence, and decisions by thelogic of appropriateness.On the one hand, you had evaluations ofjudgments on the basis of consequences, onthe other of matching, appropriateness ofmatching.You probably walked away with a, a lessclear sense or understanding of thebureaucratic politics model, though.And this lecture, we'll give a moreelaborate depiction of that model.It will focus on the core process ofexchange and coalition formation.In organizations, you'll frequentlyconfront coalitions of interest, andyou'll come to realize that collectiveaction and organization reforms are

    impossible if you don't build and manage acoalition to get things done.Therefore, this is the theory lecture ofweek three, and it concerns coalitionformation.To this point, we've covered threetheories, and each one has certainshortcomings.For example, the Rational Act Reviewassumes people have the same goal, andthat's seldom the case.Also, many people are not motivated by theconsequences of their actions.

    This leads us to organizational process orrule following views.But, this perspective fails to take intoaccount how peripheral organizations canmatter, and how many of the routines beingsuggested and enacted have parochialinterest behind them.There's politics, and change, and rulefollowing is to static and path dependentto catch that.So, finally, we have the bureaucraticpolitics model.And here, we see more knitty gritty

    politics striving decision coalitions.But, we didn't get too deeply into howinterests are negotiated and collectivedecisions are reached last time.So, this week, we'll concentrate more onthis final and third theory.This week, we will spend a good deal oftime elaborating and explaining howcoalitions can be managed.We'll zone in on coalition dynamics and

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    its core process of exchange andnegotiation.So, let's start with something verysimple.What are some examples of coalitions?The most common examples are those ofpolitical and international coalitions.For example, in Chile, there are manypolitical parties as shown diagram ofcircles in the figure next to me.Some of the parties find mutual interestan gain from working together so they forma political coalition, like the Coalitionfor Change.Which are all the blue colored, circleshere.Or, a coalition of parties for thedemocracy and that's mostly the rest asidefrom the purple and white.Another example might be seen in thisdescent tree of Christian politicalparties in New Zealand.A coalition here ends up being a temporaryalliance into a unified party, but it

    doesn't last very long.So, it suggests that coalitions maybe havemore of a temporary nature in manyorganizational contexts.Other coalitions can be interest groupbased where a variety of groups or evendistinct religious sects coalesce aroundan issue of mutual concern.There are even organizational coalitionswhere different agencies and organizationscoordinate their provision of services dueto a great deal of overlap.We've already read some discussions of

    coalitions in week two of the course.Both James March and Graham Allisondiscuss them in various ways.In most instances, coalitions are socialsystems, lead or organized by mutuallyinconsistent decision makers.Here, it becomes difficult to see thedecision makers as a unified team.Instead, we have a power struggle or atenuous coalition that describes thedecision processees.Looking back to our table of Alison'stheories and the outline of the

    bureaucratic politics model, we will seethat there are multiple players indifferent positions.There are various factors that shape theirpreferences and stands, for example, theirparticular interests or their stakesspecific to them, the goals of someone intheir position, and the deadlines rushingthem to decide.Each actor has certain resources, or

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    power.Things that people want.And they enter a game of exchange, orbargaining, according to rules.The end decision, or organizational actionis the result of bargaining across theseactors.Jim March, on the other hand, describescoalitions in a nice way that complementsAllison's bureaucratic politics model, aswell as Kevin Hula's notion of coalitionsthat you read this week.His focus, however, is more on the centralorganizing process of a coalition, theprocess that creates and sustains acoalition.Jim March argues that scholars describecoalitional decisions, or coalitionformation as following one of twoprocesses among others.The first process, which I want to relateas background, not as something you reallyneed to learn, but has been called kind ofa power struggle.

    And, it has sometimes been analyzed oroperationalized as a simple force model.A force model is an extension of expectedutility calculations we did forindividuals last week except, this time wehave more able actors with differentpreferences, or different values placed onthe outcome.And, they're given different weights inmaking decisions.So, to calculate the decision, a coalitiondoes this in a force model simply byadding up the expected utilities waiting

    those of more important or powerful actorsgreater than others.So, it kind of has this lump sum, calculussort of form.So, take our example of the umbrella andthe expected utility of bringing it or notto class, or even the dating example ofasking someone out or not.If we calculate that for each of us, allof us as a group, and then wait our scoreby the relative power we halved eachother, then we add everyone up.Then we should have our collective

    decision, right?The problem with this procedure is thatpower is depicted as a stable personaltrait that we can actually measure.But, power is not really a personal traitby many theorists out there in Academe.Think, for example, of triads, ordependent notions of rank that I'm onlypowerful when my best friend is around tosupport me when I interact with you.

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    That changes over time and the contextwhere they're not there, I am in a weakerstate, right?It's also tautological as a model, thisforce model, an explanation.When people get what they want, power isseen as explaining why they got it.So, plus, power can refer to manydifferent things persons acquire.As such, it's kind of, it's kind of hardto measure as one construct that everyoneagrees upon.So, the force idea of just extending ourpure rationale actor model, the sets ofpeople doesn't really work too well.A better way to study power struggles isthrough exchange models, or at least thisis what Jim March is arguing in his textthat you had to read this week.Here, collective choices are produced byvoluntary exchanges.So, trading and bargaining.This is the central organizing process ofAlison's bureaucratic politics model, as

    well as Kevin Hula's incentives theory, orwhat you and I are just going to callcoalition depictions.The process of exchange is relativelysimple.Every actor enters into a voluntaryexchange relation regulated by rules.And this is, essentially, Allison's rulesof the game that you saw in thebureaucratic politics model.Second, participants bring resources tothe table.That is, they bring money, property,

    information, skills, access to others,rights, knowledge, etc.This is similar to Allison's notion ofpower.Please also note that Scott describedthese powers of control, or control overresources as resting in various roles andpositions within an organization.So, ownership, management, like capital,worker expertise, bridging roles and rulesof establishment of external actors likeregulative agencies.So, here we have, so far, actors in turn

    to voluntary changes that follow rules ofthe game.And, in addition, they bring certain kindsresources to the table, things that peoplewant that they can bargain and negotiatewith.The third feature of an exchange is thatthe process of choices one where mutuallyacceptable trades are arranged.So again, here, we have mutually

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    acceptable trades by bargaining that youkind of barter back and forth until youfind an agreed upon exchange relation.Then finally, each actor trades trying toimprove their position fulfilling theirpreferences or identity as best they canuntil no more legal or mutually acceptabletrades are possible.So, in theory, this is where academicmodels we, we assume there's no timelimit.But in reality, and so, then we simulateout these kind of exchange dynamics,right?But, of course, in reality, as Hula andAllison write, the actors often do facetime limits.So, you can actually impose that on yourmodel as well.So, the exchange process is described hereis the core of the bureaucratic politicsmodel and a coalition formation moregenerally, and that's what we want tospend a little more time on it not just in

    the last slide or two.