PAD 502 Organizational Dynamics Final Project – Learning As.docx
- 1. PAD 502: Organizational Dynamics Final Project – Learning Assessment of a Real-World Organization The purpose of this assignment is to create an opportunity for students to apply the ideas and concepts discussed in the class and the readings in the analysis of a real- world organization. Your choice of an organization will be an important one, and may be drawn from your own experience or be an organization were information is readily available. Be sure to maintain a professional stance in relation to matters that are sensitive and confidential. When necessary, you should disguise the source of your project (unless the case is drawn from public records) through use of appropriate pseudonyms. Confidentiality and the general conduct of the project are entirely your responsibility, so proceed with caution and ethical care. In essence, the case study invites you to do the following: 1) Identify an organization to be assessed based on the principles of organizational learning (overall course theme). 2) Consider the three organizational perspectives and the associated materials as lenses for such an assessment. 3) Engage in research activity that allows you to test the relevance of the different ideas through the accumulation of relevant information and data.
- 2. Formal Requirements 1. Part 1 – Organizational Overview (25 Points) (Due 10/16 at 11:59 PM) The aim of part 1 is to get you started on the project and to get you into a frame of mind that is analytical, takes the ideas discussed in the class and applies them to the organization being studied. This report should be no more than 6 double-spaced typewritten pages (APA format) and include the following: A brief account of the organization being investigated, providing sufficient information for the reader to understand the nature of the organization and its context. This section should include relevant background information as well as a clear statement of the focus of your case study. For example, it is appropriate to provide information on the age, size, and history of the organization, the product or services it provides, and the general nature of its environment. The account should also offer a clear, concise argument as to the value of assessing this organization based on the principles of organizational learning. This is a critical dimension of your paper and cannot be overemphasized. Recall that our objective in this course is always to demonstrate the relevance of sound theory to real-world organizations. Part 1, then, should be demonstrate the potential value of organizational learning principles specifically for your chosen organization and more broadly for good government.
- 3. Make sure that the report is written in a professional manner. It will be judged according to the quality of analysis and presentation, in accordance with the criteria listed later in the grading rubric. MnM 2 Guidelines for Case Study Project Grading Rubric Part 1 – Organizational Overview Content Points Includes relevant background info (age, size, history, service provided, nature of environment) 10 Demonstrates the value of organizational learning for the org and to good government 10 Narrative flows logically, sections and paragraphs do not seem disconnected (uses appropriate transitions, headings, and sub-headings – see writing helps folder on Blackboard) 5 Sources identified, Writing is w/out grammatical errors, and in APA format (potential deductions) Total Points for Part 1 25
- 4. 2. Part 2 – Learning Assessment (75 points) (Due Dec. 5th at 11:59 PM) The purpose of this report is to produce a professional learning assessment of the organization being studied. The assessment should be prepared in a format and style appropriate for delivery to the organization, including a cover letter, a title page, and an executive summary highlighting the research findings and recommendations, and a clearly organized and professionally written report. The actual assessment or report should not exceed 12 double-spaced typewritten pages (APA format). To accomplish this task, your report should include: 1. An introductory section that briefly re-introduces the organization and establishes the purpose of the report. This should include some direction as to how the report is organized into sections. 2. The main body of the report should include four major sections. Section 1 should outline the basics of organizational learning and describe the key components or learning processes. Then, sections 2-4 should cover the instrumental/structural, cultural, and myth/institutional perspectives. Sections 2-4 should employ the associated concepts/materials covered in the course to assess the potential for organizational learning
- 5. (challenges/obstacles and opportunities at the various stages of the learning process). 3. A concluding section that reiterates the value of your report and offers some detailed recommendations (grounded in the prior assessment and supported by course materials) as to the steps the organization will need to take to become a learning organization. Most likely, this section will need to demonstrate an understanding of how the structural, cultural, and institutional components of an organization must be managed and work in tandem to produce learning. Grading Rubric Part 2 – Learning Assessment Content Points Organization, purpose, and format – Cover letter, title page, executive summary, written assessment/report 15 Quality of assessment in linking theory/course materials to organization/data: the rigor and soundness of your analysis and general conclusions (Is it apparent that the linkage of theory 55 MnM
- 6. 3 Guidelines for Case Study Project and data shaping your conclusions? Section 1 of the body is worth 10 points and sections 2-4 are worth 15 points each) Narrative flows logically, sections and paragraphs do not seem disconnected (uses appropriate transitions … It is apparent that you have reviewed and followed the advice offered in the writing helps folder in Blackboard) 5 Sources identified, Writing is w/out grammatical errors, and is in APA format (potential deductions) Total Points for Part 1 75 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. STRATEGIC PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT IN GOVERNMENT: USING THE BALANCED SCORECARD Bush, Patricia Cost Management; May/Jun 2005; 19, 3; ABI/INFORM Global pg. 24
- 7. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
- 8. CHAPTER SIX ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS AND EFFECTIVENESS Organizations are goal-directed, purposive entities, and their effectiveness in pursuing those goals influences the quality of our lives and even our ability to survive. Virtually all of management and organization theory is concerned with performance and effectiveness, at least implicitly. Virtually all of it is in some way concerned with the challenge of getting an organization and the people in it to perform well. This chapter first discusses major issues about organizational goals and the goals of public organizations, including observations that other authors have made about how public organizations' goals influence their other characteristics. Then the chapter reviews the models of organizational effectiveness that researchers have developed and discusses their implications for organizing and managing public organizations. As previous chapters have discussed, beliefs about the performance and effectiveness of public organizations, especially in comparison to private organizations, have played a major role in some of the most significant political changes and government reforms in recent history, in nations around the world. Executives and officials in government, business, and nonprofit organizations emphasize goals and effectiveness in a variety of ways. One can hardly look at the annual report or the Web site of an organization without encountering its mission statement, which expresses the organization's general goals. Very often one also sees statements of core values that express general objectives, and on the Web sites of many government agencies, one can review the organization's strategic plan or performance plan, which expresses its specific goals and performance measures. All of the major federal agencies have strategic plans with goals statements or “performance plans” or both on their Web sites and in their annual reports. The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993 directed each federal agency to develop such plans, and
- 9. subsequent reports of their performance, in relation to the goals. Web sites now make available copies of all the federal agencies' strategic plans and performance plans. For example, on the Web site for the Social Security Administration (SSA), which in money paid out is the largest federal program, one can review the 2013–2016 performance plan (U.S. Social Security Administration, 2013). The plan provides the following summary of the agencys's goals (p. 5): Strategic Goal 1: Deliver Quality Disability Decisions and Services I. Reduce the Wait Time for Hearing Decisions and Eliminate the Hearings Backlog II. Improve Our Disability Policies, Procedures, and Tools III. Expedite Cases for the Most Severely Disabled Individuals Strategic Goal 2: Provide Quality Service to the Public I. Increase the Use of Our Online Services II. Increase Public Satisfaction with Our Telephone Services III. Expand the Use of Video Services IV. Improve the Clarity of Our Notices Strategic Goal 3: Preserve the Public's Trust in Our Programs I. Increase Efforts to Accurately Pay Benefits II. Recover Improper Payments III. Maintain Accurate Earnings Records IV. Make Our Administrative Operations Even More Efficient Strategic Goal 4: Strengthen Our Workforce and Infrastructure I. Strengthen Our Workforce—Recruit, Train, Develop, and Retain Superior Employees II. Maintain Secure and Reliable Information Technology Services III. Increase Efficiency of Our Physical Infrastructure These expressions of the goals of the SSA raise the question of how useful they are and how much influence they will have on the agency's effectiveness. Clearly many officials and executives think such expressions have value. One now finds strategic plans and performance plans of this sort at all levels of government (Berman and Wang, 2000), in part because state
- 10. legislatures have passed legislation similar to the GPRA, requiring state agencies to prepare such plans. This huge national investment in stating goals and performance measures reflects one of the strongest trends in public management in the past two decades. Authors and officials have increasingly emphasized themes such as “managing for results” that involve stating goals and measurements that reflect effectiveness in achieving the goals (Abramson and Kamensky, 2001; Moynihan, 2008; Osborne and Gaebler, 1992). There is also a movement emphasizing the integration of such goals and performance measures with governmental and agency budgets (Grizzle and Pettijohn, 2002). Melkers and Willoughby (1998) reported that forty-seven of the fifty states have some form of requirement for performance-based budgeting. This concentration on goals and performance measures involves interesting basic assumptions. It assumes that public organizations will perform better if the people in them clarify their goals and measure progress against them. This assumption usually links to the idea that government agencies need to perform a lot better, and that they can do so by becoming more like business firms, which presumably have clearer goals and performance measures. These assumptions sound reasonable enough, but Radin (2000) points out that these and others undergirding the GPRA and related approaches at other levels of government may not work well in the fragmented, pluralistic institutional and political environments of government agencies described in the preceding chapter. The multiple authorities and actors in the system do not necessarily agree on the goals and performance criteria for public organizations, and they often do not support a rational, goal-oriented approach to decision making. Still, the importance attached to goals, performance, and effectiveness makes it interesting and important to examine the ways in which organization and management theorists have dealt with these topics. Ironically, in relation to the emphasis that public officials have been placing on goals and measures,
- 11. when one turns to the literature on organizational goals and effectiveness, one finds something of a muddle, although a very insightful one. Experts in the field have not developed clear, conclusive ways of defining organizational goals and defining and assessing effectiveness. Their use of the somewhat unusual- sounding concept of organizational effectiveness reflects some of the complications. Referring simply to organizational success bears less of an implication that the activities of the organization brought about the success. Referring to effectiveness suggests not only that the organization had good results but also that it brought about these results through its own management, design, and other features. Many other terms for performing well also have limitations. In assessing business firms, most investors look carefully at their profitability. Yet sophisticated investors realize that short-term profitability may in some cases mask long-term problems. In addition, consumer advocates and environmental groups object to assessments of business performance that disregard concerns for the environment and ethical concerns for the consumer. In addition, profitability does not apply to government and nonprofit organizations. As with the generic approach in general, researchers have to consider the need for a general body of knowledge on organizational effectiveness that is not restricted to certain sectors or industries. As described shortly, in response to such complications, researchers have attempted a number of different approaches to organizational goals and effectiveness. General Organizational Goals An organizational goal is a condition that an organization seeks to attain. The discussion here recites many problems with the concept of goals, but organization theorists have developed some useful insights and distinctions about them. For example, the mission statements that have become so popular in recent decades represent what organization theorists would call official goals (Perrow, 1961). Official goals are formal expressions of general goals that present an organization's major values and
- 12. purposes, such as those for the SSA described earlier. One tends to encounter official goals in mission statements and annual reports, where they are meant to enhance the organization's legitimacy and to motivate and guide its members. Operative goals are the relatively specific immediate ends an organization seeks, reflected in its actual operations and procedures. People in organizations often consider goals important as expressions of guiding organizational values that can stimulate and generally orient employees to the organization's mission. In addition, clarifying goals for individuals and work groups can improve efficiency and productivity. The discussion of motivation in Chapter Ten reviews the research that shows that providing workers with clear, challenging goals can enhance their productivity. Nevertheless, the concept of a goal has many complications, with important implications for organizing and managing and for the debate over whether public and private organizations differ. These complications include the problem that goals are always multiple (Rainey, 1993). A goal is always one of a set of goals that one is trying to achieve (Simon, 1973). The goals in a set often conflict with one another—maximizing one goal takes away from another goal. Short-term and long-term goals can conflict with each other. For example, although business firms supposedly have clearer, more measurable goals than public and nonprofit organizations, such firms have to try to manage conflicts among goals for short-term and long-term profits, community and public relations, employee and management development, and social responsibility (such as compliance with affirmative action and environmental protection laws). Goals are arranged in chains and hierarchies, and this makes it hard to express a goal in an ultimate or conclusive way. One goal leads to another or is an operative goal for a higher or more general goal. Many of the concepts related to organizational purpose— such as goals, objectives, values, incentives, and motives— overlap in various ways, leaving us with no conclusive or definitive terminology. Distinctions among these concepts are
- 13. relatively arbitrary. These complications appear to be related to a divergence among organization theorists, between those who take the concept of goals very seriously and those who reject it as relatively useless (Rainey, 1993). These complications present a problem for both theorists and practicing managers. The later discussion of models of effectiveness points out that these sorts of complications impede the assessment of organizational effectiveness—it can be difficult to say what an organization's goals really are and to measure their achievement. It is important for leaders and managers to help the organization clarify its goals, but these complications make that a very challenging process. The next chapter discusses some of the procedures that members of organizations can use to clarify the organization's goal statements. Goals of Public Organizations The complications surrounding the concept of goals also contribute to an interesting anomaly in the debate over the distinctiveness of public organizations. They imply that all organizations, including business firms, have vague, multiple, and relatively intangible goals. Without a doubt, however, the most often repeated observations about public organizations are that their goals are particularly vague and intangible compared to those of private business firms and that they more often have multiple, conflicting goals (see III.1.a in Exhibit 3.1; Rainey, 1993). Previous chapters illustrated the meaning of this observation. Public organizations produce goods and services that are not exchanged in markets. Government auspices and oversight imposed on these organizations include such multiple, conflicting, and often intangible goals as the constitutional, competence, and responsiveness values discussed in Chapters Four and Five (see Exhibit 4.3). In addition, authorizing legislation often assigns vague missions to government agencies and provides vague guidance for public programs (Lowi, 1979; Seidman and Gilmour, 1986). Given such mandates, coupled with concerns over public opinion and public demands, agency
- 14. managers feel pressured to balance conflicting, idealized goals. Conservation agencies, for example, receive mandates and pressures both to conserve natural resources and to develop them (Wildavsky, 1979, p. 215). Prison commissioners face pressures both to punish offenders and to rehabilitate them (DiIulio, 1990). Police chiefs must try to find a balance between keeping the peace, enforcing the law, controlling crime, preventing crime, ensuring fairness and respect for citizen rights, and operating efficiently and with minimal costs (Moore, 1990). In addition, many observers go on to assert that these goal complexities have major implications for public organizations and their management. Some researchers emphasize the effect of these complexities on work attitudes and performance. Buchanan (1974, 1975) found that federal agency managers reported lower organizational commitment, job involvement, and work satisfaction than did managers in private business. He also found that the federal managers reported a weaker sense of having impacts on their organizations and a weaker sense of finding challenge in their jobs. He concluded that the vagueness and value conflicts inherent in public organizations' goals were among several reasons the federal managers reported lower commitment, involvement, and satisfaction. He argued that the diffuseness of agencies' objectives made it harder to design challenging jobs for the public sector managers and harder for them to perceive the impact of their work, which in turn weakened federal managers' commitment and satisfaction. Other studies have found more positive attitudes among managers in government than Buchanan observed, but his conclusions suggest the kinds of problems that vague and conflicting organizational goals may cause. Boyatzis (1982), in a study of the competencies of a broad sample of managers, found that public managers displayed weaker “goal and action” competencies—those concerned with formulating and emphasizing means and ends. He concluded that the difference must result from the absence in the public
- 15. sector of clear goals and performance measures such as sales and profits. Other observations concern effects on organizational structure (pervasiveness of rules, number of levels) and hierarchical delegation. Some scholars have asserted that the goal ambiguity in public agencies and the consequent difficulties in developing clear and readily measurable performance indicators lead to performance evaluation on the basis of adherence to proper procedure and compliance with rules (Barton, 1980; Dahl and Lindblom, 1953; Lynn, 1981; Meyer, 1979; Warwick, 1975). Under accountability pressures and scrutiny by legislative bodies, the chief executive, oversight agencies, courts, and the media, higher-level executives in public agencies demand compliance with rules and procedures mandated by Congress or oversight agencies or contained in their chartering legislation. Executives and managers in public agencies also tend to add even more rules and clearance requirements in addition to externally imposed rules and procedures; plus, they add more hierarchical levels of review and generally resist delegation in an effort to control the units and individuals below them. The absence of clear, measurable, well-accepted performance criteria thus induces a vicious cycle of “inevitable bureaucracy” (Lynn, 1981) in which the demand for increased accountability increases the emphasis on rule adherence and hierarchical control. Some authors add the observation that these conditions breed a paradox in which the proliferation of rules and clearance requirements fails to achieve control over lower levels (Buchanan, 1975; Warwick, 1975). Rules provide some protections for people at lower levels, through civil service protections and the safety of strict compliance with other administrative rules. Superiors' efforts to control lower-level employees through additional rules and reporting requirements add to bureaucratic complexity without achieving control. In this way, goal ambiguity also supposedly contributes to a weakening of the authority of top leaders in public organizations. Because they cannot assess performance on the
- 16. basis of relatively clear measures, their control over lower levels is weakened. The absence of clear performance measures also allegedly contributes to a weakening of leaders' attentiveness to developing their agencies. Because they cannot simply refer to their performance against unambiguous targets to justify continued funding, they must play more political, expository roles to develop political support for their programs. Blumenthal (1983), reflecting on his experiences as a top federal and business executive, began his account of the differences between these roles with the observation that there is no bottom line in government. Media relations, general appearance and reputation, and political relations external to the agency figure more importantly in how others assess an executive's performance than do concrete indicators of the performance of his or her agency. Allison (1983) provided an account of the similar observations of experienced public officials about the absence of a bottom line and of accepted and readily measurable performance indicators in public agencies. Later chapters examine some of the research findings that support—or fail to support—these observations. For example, several surveys covering different levels of government, different parts of the United States, and different organizations asked managers in government agencies and business firms to respond to questions about whether the goals of their organization are vague, hard to define, and hard to measure. The results showed no particular differences between the government managers and the business managers in their responses to such questions (Rainey, 1983; Rainey, Pandey, and Bozeman, 1995). In addition, Bozeman and Rainey (1998) reported evidence that government managers in their study were more likely than business managers to say that their organizations had too many rules; this is not consistent with the claim that government managers like to create more and more rules and red tape. In spite of conflicting assertions and findings such as these, the main point is that many observers claim that the goals of public organizations have a distinct
- 17. character that influences their other characteristics and their management. The findings just mentioned do not necessarily prove that there are no such differences, but they certainly complicate the debate. They illustrate the importance for researchers and managers of clarifying just what is meant by these repeated references to the vague, conflicting, multiple goals of public agencies and of proving or disproving their alleged effect on organizations and management in government. Regardless of these complications in the analysis of the goals of public agencies, it is still very important and useful for agency leaders and managers to try to clarify their organization's goals and assess its effectiveness in achieving them. Both the Web sites of many public agencies and the following chapter provide many examples of efforts at clarifying goals and missions, and an expanding literature on public management provides many more (Behn, 1994, p. 50; Denhardt, 2000; Hargrove and Glidewell, 1990, p. 95; Meyers, Riccucci, and Lurie, 2001). Chapter Nine describes a stream of research in psychology that has found that work groups perform better when given clear, challenging goals (Locke and Latham, 1990a; Wright, 2001, 2004). In seeking to clarify goals, however, managers need to be aware of the attendant complications and conflicts. They also need to be aware of the concepts and models for assessing organizational effectiveness that researchers have developed, as well as of the controversies over the strengths and weaknesses of the models and the trade-offs among them. Models for Assessing Organizational Effectiveness The people who study organizational effectiveness agree on many of the preceding points, but they have never come to agreement on one conclusive model or framework for assessing effectiveness (Daft, 2013; Hall and Tolbert, 2004). The complexities just described, as well as numerous others, have caused them to try many approaches. The Goal Approach When organization theorists first began to develop models of organizational effectiveness, it appeared obvious that one
- 18. should determine the goals of one's organization and assess whether it achieves them. As suggested already, however, organizations have many goals, which vary along many dimensions and often conflict with one another. Herbert Simon (1973) once pointed out that a goal is always embedded in a set of goals, which a person or group tries to maximize simultaneously—such as to achieve excellence in delivery of services to clients but also keep the maintenance schedule up, keep the members happy and motivated, maintain satisfactory relations with legislators and interest groups, and so on. Many different coalitions or stakeholders associated with an organization—managers, workers, client and constituency groups, oversight and regulatory agencies, legislators, courts, people in different subunits with different priorities for the organization, and so on—can have different goals for the organization. One can also state goals at different levels of generality, in various terms, and in various time frames (short term versus long term). Goals always link together in chains of means and ends, in which an immediate objective can be expressed as a goal but ultimately serves as a means to a more general or longer-term goal. In addition, researchers and consultants can have a hard time specifying an organization's goals because the people in the organization have difficulty stating or admitting the real goals. Organizations have not only formal, publicly espoused goals but also actual goals. In their annual reports, public agencies and business firms often make glowing statements of their commitment to the general welfare as well as to their customers and clients. An automobile company might express commitment to providing the American people with the safest, most enjoyable, most efficient automobiles in the world. A transportation agency might state its determination to serve all the people of its state with the safest, most efficient, most effective transportation facilities and processes possible. Yet the actual behavior of these organizations may indicate more concern with their economic security than with their clients and
- 19. the general public. The goal model, in simplified forms, implies a view of management as a rational, orderly process. Earlier chapters have described how management scholars increasingly depict managerial decisions and contexts as more turbulent, intuitive, paradoxical, and emergent than a rational, goal-based approach implies. All of these complications cause organizational effectiveness researchers to search for alternatives to a simple goal model. As the discussion of strategy in Chapter Four demonstrated, however, experts still exhort managers to identify missions, core values, and strategies. This may depart from a strict goal- based approach, but when you tell people to decide what they want to accomplish and to design strategies to achieve those conditions, you are talking about goals, even if you devise some other names for them. Goal clarification also plays a key role in managerial procedures described in later chapters, such as management by objectives (MBO). Experts have suggested various terminologies and procedures for identifying organizational goals, and the goal model has never really been banished from the search for effectiveness criteria. These prescriptive frameworks, however, illustrate many of the complexities of goals mentioned earlier. Morrisey (1976), for example, illustrated the multiple levels and means- ends relationships of goals. He suggested a framework for public managers to use in developing MBO programs that he describes as a funnel in which the organization moves from greater generality to greater specificity by stating goals and missions, key results areas, indicators, objectives, and finally, action plans. Gross (1976) suggested a framework involving seven different groups of goals—satisfying interests (such as those of clients and members), producing output, making efficient use of inputs, investing in the organization, acquiring resources, observing codes (such as laws and budgetary guidelines), and behaving rationally (through research and proper administration). Under each of these general goals he listed multiple subgoals. Obviously, managers and researchers
- 20. have difficulty clearly and conclusively specifying an organization's goals. For similar reasons, researchers have grappled with complications in measuring effectiveness. As usual, they have encountered the problem of choosing between subjective measures and objective measures. Some have asked respondents to rate the effectiveness of organizations, sometimes asking members for the ratings, sometimes comparing members' ratings of their own units in the organization with the ratings provided by other members (such as top managers or members of other units). Sometimes they have asked people outside the organization for ratings. Others have developed more objective measures, such as profitability and productivity indicators, from records or other sources. Some researchers have developed both types of evidence, but they have found this expensive. They have also sometimes found that the two types of measures may not correlate with each other. In one frequently used variant of the goals approach, researchers have not sought to determine the specific goals of a specific organization; rather, they have measured ratings of effectiveness on certain criteria or goals that they assume all organizations must pursue, such as productivity, efficiency, flexibility, and adaptability. Mott (1972), for example, studied the effectiveness of government organizations (units of NASA; the State Department; the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; and a state mental hospital) by asking managers in them to rate the quantity, quality, efficiency, adaptability, and flexibility of their divisions. The Systems-Resource Approach Partly because of difficulties with goal models, Yuchtman and Seashore (1967) developed a systems-resource model. They concentrated on whether an organization can attain valued resources from its environment to sustain itself. They placed effectiveness criteria in a hierarchy, with the organization's ability to exploit external resources and opportunities as the ultimate criterion. They regarded this criterion as being
- 21. ultimately immeasurable by itself: it has to be inferred by measuring the next-highest, or penultimate, criteria, which they identified in a study of insurance companies. These criteria included such factors as business volume, market penetration, youthfulness of organizational members, and production and maintenance costs. They developed these factors by using statistical techniques to group together measures of organizational activities and characteristics such as sales and number of policies in force. Drawing on a survey they conducted in the same companies, they also examined the relationships between lower-order, subsidiary variables, such as communication and managerial supportiveness, and the penultimate factors. Not many researchers have followed this lead with subsequent research efforts. Critics have raised questions about whether the approach confuses the conception and ordering of important variables. Some of the penultimate factors could just as well be called goals, others seem to represent means for achieving goals, and some of the factors seem more important than others. Critics have complained that the analytical techniques bunched together unlike factors inappropriately. Others have pointed out that the criteria represent the interests of those in charge of the organizations, even though other actors, such as customers and public interest groups, might have very different interests. (Rainey 147-158) Rainey, Hal G. Understanding and Managing Public Organizations, 5th Edition. Jossey-Bass, 2014-01-27. VitalBook file. The citation provided is a guideline. Please check each citation for accuracy before use.