ABSTRACT
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Many literatures on decision making have involved heated debates over the capacity of people and
organizations to make large changes. Scholars have argued about the capacity of decision makers to
make substantial changes from prior decisions at the individual and the organizational levels. Those
who argued that substantial change was rare pointed to the conservative nature of decision making
in a variety of areas including budgeting and policymaking. In this view (that I will call the
incrementalist view) stasis is the characteristic state of organizational and individual decision
making. In the incrementalist view, there are strong disincentives to making decisions that
depart substantially from the status quo (Lindblom, 1959). These disincentives make large depar-
tures rare and dangerous. Those who disputed this argument pointed to examples of large change.
Many policy areas seemingly experienced large changes; popular examples included the space
program and military budgets. For the most part, the debate raged as both parties talked past
the others.
