Public Organization Environments

Abstract

Analytic confusion between the concepts "organizational constituent" and "organizational client " has prevented students of public administration from fully understanding one of the fundamental normative issues in urban governance. This conceptual confusion is symptomatic of a more general deficiency in public sector research, where the systematic application of concepts and approaches to the study of organizational environments has been inadequate. Students of public administration have much to learn from the interdisciplinary literature in organizational theory, where scholars have been more successful in designing conceptual and empirical analytic techniques for understanding organizational environments. Descriptive and prescriptive organization theory is also relevant to resolving normative issues in urban governance such as that described here in terms of the dichotomy between constituent and client.