Connecting the Dots in Public Management: Political Environment, Organizational Goal Ambiguity, and the Public Manager's Role Ambiguity

This article is a systematic effort to study a key theoreticalquestion from the vantage point of public sector organizationalbehavior. Most political science models, with a primary interestin democratic control of bureaucracy, study the political influenceon the bureaucracy from an agency theory perspective. Organizationbehavior literature, on the other hand, is focused largely onthe study of individual-level phenomena in private organizationsand does not incorporate political context as part of explanatorymodels. This article proposes a middle-range theory to "connectthe dots," beginning with disparate sources in the polity influencingorganizational goal ambiguity, which in turn is expected toincrease managerial role ambiguity. An empirical test, usingdata collected from a national survey of managers working instate human service agencies, supports this theoretical model.We find that certain types of political influence have an impacton organizational goal ambiguity, which in turn has a directeffect in increasing role ambiguity and also an indirect effectin increasing role ambiguity through organizational structure.