OMM — Occamian Management Model: A Framework for Simplifying Management, Decision-Making, and Organizational Complexity

Abstract

This conceptual article introduces the Occamian Management Model (OMM), a proposed managerial framework for diagnosing and reducing unnecessary organizational complexity while preserving complexity that creates value, reduces material risk, enables coordination, improves decision-relevant information, or meets legitimate external requirements. OMM does not claim to invent simplicity, parsimony, or Occam’s Razor. Its proposed contribution is architectural: it organizes managerial simplification as a recurring six-stage cycle—See, Understand, Distinguish, Decide, Execute, and Measure—and connects diagnosis to four intervention choices: Preserve, Eliminate, Integrate, and Redesign. The framework is positioned in relation to bounded rationality, organizational information-processing, organization design, parsimony, and theory-building scholarship. Eight propositions are offered for future testing. The manuscript develops a conceptual model and research agenda; its constructs, measures, causal mechanisms, and propositions remain to be empirically examined.