Vaguely defined organizational missions let political actors impose any task on an agency.

Evidence

The PA’s broad mission – to enhance cooperative planning, transport mobility and economic development in the bi-state region – could include almost any activity. There were virtually no limits on the tasks that political actors could impose upon it. Whenever an interstate issue came up, state politicians could ask the Authority to take it on. Doig (2001, p. 11) describes the Authority as an ‘empty vessel, into which various ideas for interstate cooperation on transportation issues might be tossed’. What would be more efficient than using an agency that is already up and running? — Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow, The Hidden Dynamics of Path Dependence, 295

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the mission-creep and mandate-dilution themes in studies of bureaucratic expansion and principal-agent delegation.