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Many researchers and practitioners believe that the lack of specificity of employee goals is detrimental to the effectiveness of performance management in firms. Using an inductive grounded theory approach, this study identifies two managerial factors that could impact negatively goal specificity in real-life corporate environments. First, ‘goal blurring’ is a counterintuitive purposeful managerial behavior that results in blurred employee goals being set during annual reviews. Second, ‘specifying capability’ incorporates factors that can result in a lower level of specificity of employee goals with no purposeful intent. The findings reveal two main reasons managers set less specific goals: (1) limited capability and (2) choice to purposefully blur employee goals to maintain flexibility in evaluating their subordinates. While non-purposeful blurring occurs because of circumstances that make setting specific goals difficult and limit the capabilities of managers to do so, purposeful blurring of goals occurs with the main aim of maintaining flexibility in evaluating employees. As a result, blurred goals are set for employees despite managers’ awareness of the benefits of setting specific goals, which is supported by extensive research and management practice. Our work reveals the purposeful managerial blurring of employee goals, a phenomenon that has a significant impact on firm performance, though it has not been previously identified as such, or explained.

Many researchers and practitioners believe that the lack of specificity of employee goals is detrimental to the effectiveness of performance management in firms. Using an inductive grounded theory approach, this study identifies two managerial factors that could impact negatively goal specificity in real-life corporate environments. First, 'goal blurring' is a counterintuitive purposeful managerial behavior that results in blurred employee goals being set during annual reviews. Second, 'specifying capability' incorporates factors that can result in a lower level of specificity of employee goals with no purposeful intent. The findings reveal two main reasons managers set less specific goals: (1) limited capability and (2) choice to purposefully blur employee goals to maintain flexibility in evaluating their subordinates. While non-purposeful blurring occurs because of circumstances that make setting specific goals difficult and limit the capabilities of managers to do so, purposeful blurring of goals occurs with the main aim of maintaining flexibility in evaluating employees. As a result, blurred goals are set for employees despite managers' awareness of the benefits of setting specific goals, which is supported by extensive research and management practice. Our work reveals the purposeful managerial blurring of employee goals, a phenomenon that has a significant impact on firm performance, though it has not been previously identified as such, or explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have argued that utilization of quantitative performance indicators by public organizations could generate unintended consequences that might outweigh the benefits of performance measurement. We examined the relationships between goal ambiguity and external control, and distortive practices in performance measurement in public organizations. The data from 47 agencies of the central and local governments in Korea were analyzed using fixed-effect ordered logistic regression methods. The results showed that goal ambiguity was positively and significantly associated with distortive practices in performance measurement. Goal ambiguity may incentivize public employees to misuse performance information to obtain rewards for higher performance ratings. Contrary to our expectation, reinforced external control was negatively and significantly related to distortive behaviors in performance measurement. Higher work autonomy was not significantly associated with manipulation of performance information. Employees with higher intrinsic motivation were less likely to distort performance measures, whereas the ones with higher extrinsic motivation were more likely to misuse performance information to achieve higher performance ratings. Points for practitioners: To avoid the potential distortions in performance measurement, public managers should adopt a refined measurement model of performance customized to the unique characteristics of public services. Multiple sets of measures need to be developed and managed properly to respond to complex political environments which involve different key values and the stakeholders in the policy processes, and the nature of public service products and outcomes. Reinforced behavioral control in the process of measuring performance will also be necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the moderating effect of company goal clarity on the relationship between government ownership and financial performance of the listed companies in Kenya and Tanzania. The results show that government ownership holds an average of 6% of the ownership stakes and a maximum of 74% in the selected listed companies. Furthermore, it is found that, listed companies that engage in goal-setting, pursue an average of 5 company goals concurrently, and a maximum of 13. Moreover, government ownership is found to be negatively related to financial performance, while a decrease in company goal clarity is both positively and negatively related to financial performance, for the Tobin’s q and the risk-adjusted ROA models, respectively. The implication is that, as government ownership in emerging economies is endowed with relatively more skills and resources compared to other owners in listed companies, it can effectively pursue a relatively higher number of company goals. The results also suggest that a decrease in goal clarity has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between government ownership and financial performance, whereby the moderating effect reduces the magnitude of the negative effects of government ownership on financial performance, up to an optimal point of seven company goals. The decrease of company goal clarity, which mainly emanates from the concurrent pursuit of all company goals plus the social welfare ones, reduces the negative effects of the ownership on financial performances, contrary to the assertions made in the goal-setting theory.

Although public management scholars have examined the causes and consequences of goal ambiguity in public organizations, we know less about how goal perceptions intersect with emotional labour (EL) to shape attitudes in the public workplace. To address this gap, we draw from appraisal theory to examine the connection between goal perceptions and EL in U.S. government agencies. We then explore how these two concepts work in concert to shape one aspect of burnout, emotional exhaustion. Our evidence suggests that goal perceptions and EL interact such that goal characteristics appear more threatening under heavy emotional work demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is generally believed that public agencies are especially prone to goal displacement, but research has remained relatively limited. In this conceptual paper, we explore why and how goal displacement might affect public regulatory enforcement agencies. Central to our approach is an analysis of the ambiguity of enforcement goals, arguing that the ambiguity related to the evaluation of goal achievement makes enforcement agencies vulnerable for goal displacement. The underlying reason is that this type of ambiguity increases the risk of neglecting the complexities of enforcement goals. We specify three types of complexity neglect and describe their potential goal-displacement effects. We provide examples of goal-displacement-reinforcing factors to clarify conceptual notions. We conclude that in the absence of a sound tradition of ex-post effect evaluations, goal displacement might be much more prevalent in enforcement agencies than is often assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite our relatively broad and robust understanding of street level bureaucracy in a Western context, this area of inquiry remains somewhat understudied in an Eastern European context. This is particularly problematic for Romania, where poor educational stock, weak accountability mechanism, and rather frail media make front line bureaucrats’ behavior disproportionately critical to public service provision. This article partially fills this void and brings a muchneeded overview of street-level bureaucracy in Romania. Relying on recent survey data collected from 407 front line workers, the study covers four key public administration services (taxation, consumer, environmental, and labor protection) and street-level bureaucracy, describes demographics, values, work environment, and attitudes towards rules and citizens. It shows that Romanian front line workers are relatively willing to bend and break the rules if their organizational goals demand so, and that they enjoy important levels of discretion and work autonomy. These bureaucrats also depict high levels of organizational commitment, low levels of uncertainty tolerance, and high power distance. The article concludes with comments and implications for future research in policy implementation at the front lines.

Gaming behaviors are challenges to governments' performance measurement systems. This paper presents a theory of the ways in which participatory management and goal ambiguity shape gaming behaviors in performance management. Using survey data from China, this study empirically shows that in high-incentive performance measurement systems, township government cadres' participation in goal-setting has a significant positive effect on their gaming behaviors; cadres' perceived goal ambiguity has a significant negative effect on their gaming behaviors; and participatory management affects gaming behaviors through goal ambiguity. This study's findings reveal that in the context of high pressure and intense competition, gaining more useful information from participation in goal-setting and developing a deeper understanding of the evaluative goals requested by superiors may allow township government cadres to identify loopholes in performance measurement systems and seize opportunities for gaming. These findings imply that a comprehensive management strategy should be used to limit gaming behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public administration research has produced a large literature on the determinants, consequences, and complexities of goal clarity and ambiguity. This article contributes to this line of work by examining how perceived goal ambiguity and goal multiplicity condition the effect of top administrators' management on performance. In the context of U.S. nursing homes, we find that the positive effect of management on service quality tends to decrease when administrators report facing high levels of goal ambiguity and pursue numerous priorities that they consider important. This study improves our understanding of the complex mechanisms through which managerial strategies influence organizational outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Annual State Inspection by the National Assembly (ASI), which is not observed outside South Korea, is an institution that the National Assembly oversees the executive branch. This study shows how the ASI impacts the performance of the inspected public organizations and their goal ambiguity moderates the performance impact of the ASI. First, the stringent ASI would reduce the effectiveness of the inspected public organization. However, if the organizational goals were less ambiguous, the negative impact can be minor. Second, there is no statistically significant impact found for efficiency. Third, if the ASI became more stringent, the equity of the inspected public organization can increase, regardless of goal ambiguity. Because the ASI has both positive and negative impacts, it can be said that the ASI is a double-edged sword. These findings could be referred for the constitutional amendment debates and enhance our theoretical understanding of political control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the Gulf oil spill and US housing meltdown, policy-makers revamped the associated administrative infrastructure in an effort to sharpen each agency’s focus, based on the perspective that asking an organization to fulfill competing missions undermines performance. Using a formal model, I demonstrate that priority goal ambiguity introduced when an agency balances multiple roles does have detrimental effects. Yet, assigning competing missions to one organization can be better than separating them, as the underlying tasks supporting the goals may require coordination. In fact, it is precisely when ambiguity becomes more debilitating that the importance of coordination intensifies. Moreover, if the bureau is misinformed about which goals are more valued politically, fostering uncertainty in agencies charged with multiple goals can even be beneficial. The article thus describes how such organizations function and why these arrangements persist, demonstrating that structural choices impact behavior even when agencies and overseers agree on policy objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the subsidiarity principle has been underlined in Sport-for-All policies in countries such as Germany, Austria and Belgium. According to this organising principle, issues need to be handled by the lowest possible political and administrative level, and as close to the citizens as possible. The 2007 decree concerning Sport-for-All policies at the local level in Flanders (Belgium) clearly referred to this. It emphasised the decentralisation of the Sport for All policy, and highlighted the regulatory and coordinating role of local sports authorities. As a consequence, they may face conflicting roles of being coordinator, regulator and provider of mass sport at the local level. In this paper, a mixed-method approach is used to give a closer insight in the role perceptions of local sports authorities in Flanders, and their position towards private sport providers. The results show that local sports authorities consider the coordination and regulation of mass sport in their municipality as their primary task. Yet, it appears that private sport providers also perceive competition from local sports authorities. Moreover, a considerable number of the local sports authorities believe they can combine the roles of provider and coordinator. As there appears to be considerable goal ambiguity, it is necessary for local sports authorities to formulate clear goals. Referring to the principle of subsidiarity, it is argued that sports authorities should only intervene when (non-)profit sport providers are not able to achieve the desirable outcomes with regard to sport and the welfare agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on a sample of U.S. local government employees, this study examines whether the prevalence of reinvention reforms within cities affects the perceived clarity of organizational goals and job satisfaction of workers. Results from an ordered logistic regression and a series of simulated predicated probabilities indicate that job satisfaction and goal clarity are at their highest levels in cities that have a strong reinvention focus; conversely, the probability of average or below-average job satisfaction is higher in cities with a weaker reinvention focus and when goals are more ambiguous. Findings further suggest that reinvention reforms may clarify goals for workers and improve job satisfaction, but that organizations should take separate steps to clarify goals for employees. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The diffusion of quantitative measures of performance has been one of the most widespread trends in government in past decades. This trend is motivated partly by the hope that policymakers will use performance data, but we know little about the basic tendency of individuals to incorporate and use performance information. This article draws from interactive dialogue theory to argue that the connection between data and decisions will not be automatic, but will depend upon circumstances, such as the nature of the data and how they are presented. Because observational studies have limited ability to identify such circumstances, this article argues for an experimental approach that offers greater flexibility in designing theory-based treatments. A vignette experiment methodology approach is used, providing subjects with a variety of budget scenarios, varying the amount and type of information they receive, and asking them to make budget decisions. The results provide evidence that conditions of goal ambiguity, expectancy disconfirmation, and advocacy alter the potential for performance data to influence resource decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Budgetary discretion affords agencies flexibility to accomplish complex goals but must be balanced with accountability. Recently, Congress increased budgetary discretion and changed performance measures to support integrated forest restoration. We use this experiment to explore how an agency utilizes budgetary discretion and how this discretion interacts with performance measurement. We find that while the flexibility has allowed the agency to pursue integrated goals, performance measures divert attention from addressing complex problems. Our findings suggest that performance measures are not a panacea for accountability and need to be combined with other mechanisms, such as internal guidance and oversight from collaborative partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strong public and political support for mass transit in the U.S. is based on lofty goals, including congestion reduction, economic development, aesthetics, sustainability, and much more. Yet, as is the case in many areas of public policy, the pursuit of multiple and broad objectives, however worthy, can diffuse efforts and fail to achieve desired results. Moreover, these goals suggest a lack of focus on the needs of transit riders themselves, particularly the poor and transit dependent. We examine this by combining data from the National Household Travel Survey, the National Transit Database, the American Public Transportation Association, and a survey we conducted of 50 U.S. transit operators. First, we find that while rail transit riders in the aggregate are approximately as wealthy as private vehicle travelers, bus patrons have far lower incomes, and this disparity is growing over time. Second, few transit agencies publicly identify serving the poor or minorities as a goal, instead focusing on objectives that appeal to more affluent riders and voters as a whole. Finally, in recent decades transit spending priorities have been slanted away from bus service and towards commuter-oriented rail services favored by the wealthier general voting public, although most members of this group rarely if ever ride transit. We contend that efforts to secure popular support for transit subsidies stifle agencies' ability to acknowledge transit's critical social service function and serve the needs of its core demographic. While such strategies make sense politically, underserving the poor may be poor public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Planning on the 4-disk version of the Tower of London (TOL4) was examined in stroke patients and unimpaired controls. Overall TOL4 solution scores indicated impaired planning in the frontal stroke but not non-frontal stroke patients. Consistent with the claim that processing the relations between current states, intermediate states, and goal states is a key process in planning, the domain-general relational complexity metric was a good indicator of the experienced difficulty of TOL4 problems. The relational complexity metric shared variance with task-specific metrics of moves to solution and search depth. Frontal stroke patients showed impaired planning compared to controls on problems at all three complexity levels, but at only two of the three levels of moves to solution, search depth and goal ambiguity. Non-frontal stroke patients showed impaired planning only on the most difficult quaternary-relational and high search depth problems. An independent measure of relational processing (viz., Latin square task) predicted TOL4 solution scores after controlling for stroke status and location, and executive processing (Trail Making Test). The findings suggest that planning involves a domain-general capacity for relational processing that depends on the frontal brain regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The previous research on goal ambiguity has suggested some methodological issues, such as the lack of a clear concept of program goal ambiguity, the use of single-dimension goal ambiguity, the exclusive dependence on perceptual data, and the lack of large-sample empirical studies. Recognizing these issues and identifying goal components or contents (target, time limit, and external evaluation) of goal-setting theory and of the program goal system in the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) of the U.S. federal government, this study conceptualizes program goal ambiguity and its three subdimensions: target-specification goal ambiguity, time-specification goal ambiguity, and program evaluation goal ambiguity. In addition, this study develops the objective measures of the three new dimensions of program goal ambiguity and then provides the empirical evidence of the validity, including the convergent or concurrent and discriminant validity, and reliability of the three new measures. The intention of this study is to develop a means to empirically demonstrate goal ambiguity in the U.S. federal programs and, furthermore, build a foundation for the future research related to program goal ambiguity in public administration. To this purpose, the current research focuses on the U.S. federal programs, using a sample consisting of 767 programs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a study which examines the causes and influence of ambiguity of goals on the organizational performance in health sector. The study assesses the mono-dimensionality in the Italian national health system and performs structural equation modeling to determine the causes and effects of goal ambiguity on organizational performance. Result shows that goal ambiguity is caused by political endorsement and governance commitment and lead to detriment performance in organization.

Some authors have claimed that ambiguous goals frustrate public service motivation (PSM). This study uses data from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART)1 to develop organizational goal ambiguity measures for U.S. federal agencies. These measures, from this very separate and independent source, are then significantly and negatively related to a variable measured by a questionnaire item on the U.S. Merit System Protection Board’s 2005 Merit Principles Survey. The item asks respondents about whether they are motivated to do a good job by their duty as a public employee. Responses on this item appear relevant to PSM, but because the question does not fully represent more elaborate measures of PSM, we call the variable as “public duty motivation.” Public duty motivation also relates significantly and positively to employees’ Merit Principles Survey responses about the specificity of their job goals and of their agency’s mission, and about job-goal importance and job-goal commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Prominent scholars have observed that public organizations and policies tend to have ambiguous goals, but research on these assertions is scarce. This analysis adds to a recent set of studies that developed measures of organizational goal ambiguity and found that federal agencies vary on these measures due to differences in funding patterns and other variables. This study adds variables representing the nature of the agencies' work--the routineness and complexity of their technologies and tasks. As hypothesized, complexity relates positively to one dimension of goal ambiguity, "directive goal ambiguity." Routineness of tasks relates negatively to "evaluative goal ambiguity," whereas complexity relates positively to it. These results further evince the value of the measures of goal ambiguity and their potential contribution to analysis of variations among government agencies, and to such issues as the applicability of various managerial reforms to different agencies. The results also contribute indicators of organizational task complexity and routineness that researchers can use to take into account the type of work that an agency does, in analyzing government agencies and differences among them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy formation does not come to an end when a bill becomes a law. Streetlevel bureaucrats also play a role in shaping public policies through their daily use of discretion. Through a comparative analysis of the work done by street-level bureaucrats in two different organizations in charge of implementing the Spanish immigration policy, we examined the relation between goal ambiguity and the use of informal discretion using a qualitative method relying on Lipsky's theoretical framework. Based on the data obtained through five in-depth interviews with street-level bureaucrats in each of the two selected organizations, we confirm the link between goal ambiguity and the use of informal discretion. Besides, our observations also tend to associate a low level of informal discretion to a high level of engagement toward public service values such as impartiality and fairness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human artifacts lie on the interface between their inner environments and their outer environments. Organizations, therefore, are apt subjects to be studied through a science of the artificial. Furthermore, organizational design happens at two interfaces: first, at the interface between organizational founder(s) and the firms they design, and second, between the firms and the environments in which they operate. We use recent developments in the study of entrepreneurial expertise to show why an effectual logic of design is necessary at the first interface, and what its consequences are for designing at the second. In particular, we use the exemplar case of Starbucks to codify three key characteristics of the design problem at the first interface — namely, Knightian uncertainty, goal ambiguity and environmental isotropy. We then use an `alternate histories' method to trace four strategic options — namely, planning, adaptation, vision and transformation — for designing at the second interface. In the final analysis, organizational design is important because effectuators using transformational approaches not only design organizations, but concurrently end up designing the environments we live in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]