Organizations routinely redefine objectives so their targets become easier to hit.
Evidence
Confronted with complex tasks and limited resources, organizations develop work patterns to conserve the resources available. Managers strive to deploy resources more effectively or reduce the costs of work processing. They also may overtly or covertly redefine their objectives, so that what they are trying to achieve becomes easier to accomplish. These fundamental orientations toward resource management-efficiency, productivity, and goal clarification-are at the heart of most organizational reforms in public service bu- reaucracies and are discussed at some length below, as they affect the quality of work. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 917
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to goal-displacement and work-routinization literatures on how formal mandates drift under resource pressure. — connects to: Most street-level bureaucrats stay dedicated to objectives they redefine themselves. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1062; Target-driven institutions substitute easy measurable tasks for meaningful ones — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 93; Performance measures redirect frontline discretion toward easier cases and away from hard ones — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1205
Broader Connections
- Performance measures redirect frontline discretion toward easier cases and away from hard ones
#corroborates(0.95) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1205 - Target-driven institutions substitute easy measurable tasks for meaningful ones
#expands(0.90) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 93 - Most street-level bureaucrats stay dedicated to objectives they redefine themselves.
#expands(0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1062