Journal Articles

A Conceptual Framework for Analysis of Goal Ambiguity in Public Organizations

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Prominent authors have claimed that government organizations have high levels of goal ambiguity, but these claims have needed clarification and verification. We discuss the complexities of organizational goals and their analysis, and review many authors’ observations about public agencies’ goal ambiguity and its good and bad effects. Then, we propose a conceptual framework to organize and make explicit the observations, as a set of interrelated propositions about relations among concepts that influence organizational goal ambiguity and that are influenced by it. Then, to verify or falsify these propositions, one needs to define and measure organizational goal ambiguity and other concepts in the framework. We describe research that has done so and that supports propositions in the framework, with emphasis on research that has analyzed organizational goal ambiguity using measures of three dimensions of goal ambiguity. We describe research using these dimensions, as well as other studies and translate these findings into additional propositions that extend the conceptual framework.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory

Call Number

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Publisher

Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press., 2015

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

10531858

Classification

NONE

Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Volume 25, Number 1, January 2015 p. 71-100

Subject(s)

Public Organizations
analysis

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

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