Goals, Rules, and Effectiveness in Public, Private, and Hybrid Organizations: More Evidence on Frequent Assertions About Differences

This study reports findings from a survey of managers in public, private, and hybrid organizations. The results augment the evidence about some of .the most frequent assertions about differences among those types of organizations. Public managers perceive more emphasis on rules, channels, and procedures, and more constraints on authority. Contrary to numerous assertions in the literature, however, the public managers perceive greater clarity of organizational goals and greater effectiveness in achieving those goals. One interpretation of these perceptions about goals holds that public managers say their goals are clear because they choose rule adherence as their main goal. The evidence presented refutes this inteipretation. On most of the dependent variables in the study, hybrid organization managers report perceptions distinctive from, and often intermediate between, the other two groups.