The Definition of Organizational Goals

The central concept in the study of organizations is that of the organizational goal. One might even claim that the notion of a goal is coincidental with that of an organization. Parsons1 sees goal attainment as an aspect of all systems: all systems, in order to survive, must attain whatever goals they set out for themselves. However a special kind of a system; namely the organization, is singled out as being that in which the problem of goal attainment has primacy over all other problems.2 Whatever authors have to say on the general subject there seems general agreement on this point. It is the dominating presence of a goal which marks off an 'organization' (usually used to refer to formal organizations) from all other kinds of systems. In terms of MacIver's distinction between communal and associational relationships,3 organizations are those whose rationale is primarily associational. In the case of a communal relationship, persons are met for the pleasure intrinsic to the relationship itself, as in the case of a group of friends, a clique, a gang, or nuclear family. Such a group may indeed develop goals (attacking another gang, having a baby) but even if they fail in the attainment of those goals, the group does not necessarily break up. It does break up when hostilities and cleavages mean that persons are no longer at home in one another's presence. On the other hand an associational relationship is one in which persons are met in order to pursue some goal, and their meeting is a means toward that end. It is not necessary, in this case, that they should like one another or indeed have feelings towards one another that are any more positive than the minimum necessary to work together to attain the common goal. It is the presence of such a goal and the consequent organization of effort so as to maximize the probability of attaining the goal which characterizes modern organizations. It is certainly the basis for the rationality in organizations which Weber found so remarkable and to which is given credit for the great accomplishments that modern organizations have made in healing the sick, attacking the