Sorting Through Garbage: An Autoethnography of Decision-Making Impacts on Instructional Designers in Organizational Anarchies

Abstract This narrative autoethnography explores how non-normative decision-making processes within higher education institutions impact instructional designers' work. Drawing on 13 months of reflective journaling, the author examines their experience navigating a university operating as an organized anarchy through the lens of Cohen et al.’s (1972) Garbage Can Model. The study highlights how decisions made by oversight or flight—often without input from instructional designers—create ethical tensions, misaligned priorities, and disruptions to instructional design processes. Through critical reflection, three themes emerged: managing uncertainty, navigating oversight and flight decisions, and practicing reflexive advocacy. These findings reframe instructional designers’ adaptability as a strategic, epistemic response to institutional ambiguity. The paper extends Schön’s concept of the reflective practitioner by introducing “reflexive advocacy”—proactive strategies for negotiating constraints while maintaining design integrity. This work offers practical insights for instructional designers and contributes to a growing body of literature examining the organizational contexts in which instructional design occurs.