MIXED

SCANNING:
A “Third” Approach to
Decision Making (1967)
Amitai Etzioni

HANNAH P. MALAGUEÑO
DepartmentHannah P. Malagueño
of Human Settlements and Urban Development
 AMITAI ETZIONI
a German-born Israeli and American sociologist, best known for
his work on socioeconomics and communitarianism. He founded
the Communitarian Network, a non-profit, non-partisan
organization dedicated to supporting the moral, social, and political
foundations of society. He was called the “guru” of the
communitarian movement in the early 1990s, and he established
the Communitarian Network to disseminate the movement's ideas.
In 2001, Etzioni was named among the top 100 American
intellectuals, as measured by academic citations, in Richard
Posner's book, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline. Etzioni is
currently the Director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy
Studies at The George Washington University, where he also
serves as a University Professor and professor of International
Affairs.
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Topic Overview

1. The Rationalistic Approach

2. The Incrementalist Approach
3. Critiques of Two Approaches
4. The Mixed-Scanning Approach
5. Conclusion
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Decision-Making

“Decision making is the process of identifying

and selecting a course of action to solve a
specific problem.” (K.M. Bartol and D.C.
Martin)

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“ To what extent can social
actors decide what their
course will be, and to what
extent are they compelled to
follow a course set by forces
beyond their control?

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Approaches To Decision Making

1. Rationalistic Approach
2. Incrementalist Approach
3. Mixed Approach

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1
THE RATIONALISTIC
APPROACH
High degree of control over the decision-
making situation
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Rationalistic Approach

▰ Widely held conceptions about how

decisions are and ought to be made.
▰ An actor becomes aware of a problem,
posits a goal, CAREFULLY weighs
alternative means, and chooses among
them according to his estimates of their
respective merit, with reference to the
state of affairs he prefers. 8
Rationalistic Approach

A multi-step decision making process

for making logically sound decisions
that aims to follow the orderly path from
problem identification through solution.

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2
THE INCREMENTALIST
APPROACH
Art of “muddling through”
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Incrementalist Approach

“Disjointed Incrementalism”
▰ Less demanding model of decision-making
▰ Seeks to adapt decision-making strategies to the
limited cognitive capacities of decision makers
▰ Seeks to reduce the scope and cost of information
collection and computation.
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6 Primary Requirements of the Model

1. Focuses only on policies which differ from

existing policies
2. Small number of policy alternatives are
considered
3. Restricted number of important consequences
are evaluated
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6 Primary Requirements of the Model

4. Allows for countless ends-means and means-

end adjustments
5. No “right” solution but a “never-ending series
of attacks” on the issues at hand
6. Geared to the alleviation of present, concrete
social imperfections
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Incrementalist Approach -
Assumptions:

▰ The typical decision-making process of

pluralistic/diverse societies
▰ Policies are the outcome of a give-and-take
among numerous societal partisans
▰ Partisan “mutual-adjustment”
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3
CRITIQUES OF THE
TWO APPROACHES
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Critiques of the
Rationalistic Approach

▰ Disparity between the requirements of the model and

the capacities of decision makers
▰ Information about consequences is, at best,
fractional.
▰ Unsurveyable consequences with open system of
variables
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Critiques of the
Incrementalist Approach

▰ Decisions would reflect the interests of the

most powerful partisans
▰ Tend to neglect basic societal innovations

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Critiques of the
Incrementalist Approach
▰ It doesn’t apply to “large” or fundamental
decisions
▰ Incremental decisions tend to be remedial
▰ When fundamental decisions are significantly
greater than incrementalists and when
fundamental ones are missing, it results in an
action without direction
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The Need of a More Active
Approach
Two sets of mechanisms which are provided
by the mixed-scanning
▰ High-order, fundamental policy-making
processes which set basic directions
▰ Incremental processes which prepare for
fundamental decisions and work out after they
have been reached
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4
THE MIXED-SCANNING
APPROACH
Combination of the two approaches
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Mixed-Scanning Approach

▰ Provides a realistic description of the strategy

used by the actors & the strategy for effective
actors to follow
▰ Provides a particular procedure for the
collection of information and a strategy about
the allocation of resources and guidelines for
the relations between the two
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Mixed-Scanning Approach

▰ Full detail and truncated/shortened scanning: a

detailed examination of some sectors with a
truncated review of the other sectors
▰ The mixed scanning model tries to involve the
strengths of the rational planning model and
the incremental planning model and to
eliminate the weaknesses (Mitchell 2002)
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Mixed-Scanning Approach
▰ not only combines various levels of scanning but
also provides a set of criteria for situations in which
one level or another is to be emphasized
▰ reduces the unrealistic aspects of rationalism by
limiting the details required in fundamental
decisions, and contextuating rationalism helps to
overcome the conservative slant of incrementalism
by exploring longer-run alternatives
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Mixed-Scanning Approach

Most effective when:

▰ Scanning is divided into more than two levels: all-
encompassing level and a highly detailed level
▰ Decision on how the investment of assets and
time: setting intervals, investment in encompassing
▰ Realizing that the environment radically changes
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Can decisions be evaluated?

YES. Decision-makers can summarize their values

and rank them in an ordinal scale.
▰ Degree to which the primary goal was realized
▰ Effectiveness measured by one numerical index
▰ Informal scaling of values measured by certain key
date
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Morphological Factors

▰ The positions and power relations among the

decision-makers
▰ Environment
▰ Capacities of the actor/s
▰ Capacity to build consensus

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Active Society
A society more able to effectively handle its
problems
▰ A higher capacity to build consensus than even
democracies command
▰ More numerous means of control than totalitarian
societies employ
▰ A mixed-scanning strategy
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5
CONCLUSION
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Conclusion

Mixed-Scanning reduces the unrealistic aspects of

rationalism by limiting the details required in fundamental
decisions and helps to overcome the conservative slant of
incrementalism by exploring longer-run alternatives. The
flexibility of the different scanning levels makes mixed-
scanning a useful strategy for decision-making in
environments of varying stability and by actors with varying
control and consensus-building capacities.
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THANK YOU!

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