Goal Displacement and the Protection of Human Subjects: The View from Public Administration

Meier, Kenneth J.; Calderon, M. Apolonia

doi:10.1017/s1049096516000238

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Goal displacement has been demonstrated in widely varying organizational settings, including political organizations (Bongyu, 2003;Kerr, 1975;Lipset, 1950), government agencies and services (Bengtsson, 2003;Elliott & States, 1979;Jentoft et al, 2011;Resh & Marvel, 2012;Selznick, 1949;Uitermark & Loopmans, 2013), health and elderly care organizations (Abramson, 2009;Scheff, 1962;Scott, 1967;Topliss, 1974), schools (Aviram, 1990;Bohte & Meier, 2000), research (Kerr, 1975;Meier & Calderon, 2016), software development (Fitzgerald, 1996), newspapers (Harlow, 2015), and even gangs (Elder, 1999). Goal displacement will generally influence the effectiveness of organizations negatively, as confirmed by empirical research (Abramson, 2009;Bohte & Meier, 2000;Resh & Marvel, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Risk of Goal Displacement in Regulatory Enforcement Agencies: A Goal-Ambiguity Approach

Huizinga

Bree

2021

Public Performance & Management Review

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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.

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