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Path Dependence and Organizational Behavior

Bureaucracy and Social Promotion

University of Texas at Dallas

Kenneth J. Meier

Texas A&M University, College Station; Cardiff University, Wales

A long tradition in public administration describes administrative decision making as incremental. Despite the dominance of incremental models of decision making, few quantitative studies of administrative behavior take the implications of incrementalism seriously. This article introduces two concepts (path dependence and path contingency) to facilitate quantitative models investigating incrementalism in public agencies. The article illustrates the utility of these concepts in model building by analyzing school district promotion policies. The results show that path contingency and path dependence reveal interesting dynamics of promotion standards that traditional analyses would overlook.

Key Words: path dependence • organization theory • educational policy • social promotion

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