Understanding goal formation in strategic public management: a proposed theoretical framework

Organizational goals lie at the heart of strategic public management. While research has centred on the performance impact of organizational goals and goal clarity, the field remains unclear on where organizational goals come from and how they form over time. We argue that research has suffered from the lack of a multi-level, process-focused theoretical framework through which goal formation can be understood and studied. Drawing on a problematizing review of the goals-related literature and strategic management-related theory, we develop such a framework, which provides conceptual order to a field that is rather messy in theory and in practice.