Personal Goals (Pols 206)

Introduction

Organizational behaviour scholarship treats personal and organizational goals as related but often competing forces — understanding this tension, and the factors that shape sound decision-making, is central to public administration and management theory.

Goal

Besides organizational goals, persons who work within an organization have individual or personal goals. These personal goals motivate people to work in organizations and determine efficiency — or otherwise — that is, performance. Quite often, some employees devote more effort to the pursuit of their personal goals at the expense or detriment of organizational growth — for example, this can materialize as public organization employees becoming corrupt, that is, diverting organizational material resources into private pockets.

There are, quite often, conflicts between personal and organizational goals. While organizations always seek to minimize cost and maximize profit and efficiency, employees always seek to improve in devoting their efforts to achieve their own desired goals and objectives. If efficiency and effectiveness are to be maximized, there should be congruence between personal and organizational goals.

Goals and objectives may be narrow, broad, realistic, or unrealistic — it is better to formulate decisions that can be accomplished. The resources — both human and material — must be available. In other words, decision-making should take into consideration the availability of resources necessary for accomplishment.

Another factor is Cost — this must also be determined and must be affordable to the organization; there is no point embarking on decisions whose cost — human or material — cannot be met.

Another issue is political grounds — certain decisions have to be made because of their political importance or considerations (this is treated further under the rational decision-making theory).

• Time is also very important, especially with respect to the execution or implementation of decisions. There should be a time frame within which policy decisions are expected to be accomplished.
• Information is central to all the above factors — decisions are best made on the basis of available information or data, with both quantitative and qualitative data being important.

Conclusion

Taken together, resource availability, cost, political considerations, time, and information form the core set of constraints that shape decision-making in organizations — and reconciling personal goals with organizational ones remains one of the persistent challenges to achieving efficiency and effectiveness.