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Research article
First published February 2006

Conflict, ambivalence, and the contested purpose of public organizations

Paul HoggettView all authors and affiliations
Volume 59, Issue 2
https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726706062731

Abstract

This article argues that public organizations are inherently more complex than private ones. Their complexity derives from two sources. The public sphere is the site for the continuous contestation of public purposes and this means that questions regarding values and policies saturate all public organizations, particularly at the point of delivery. Second, because government partly acts as the receptacle for the alienated subjectivity of citizens, public organizations have to contain much of what is disowned by the society in which they are situated. It follows that the fate of the public official, sometimes referred to as the ‘street-level bureaucrat’, is to have to contain the unresolved (and often partially suppressed) value conflicts and moral ambivalence of society. Such a perspective has implications for all of those who, in their different roles, seek to bring about change or development in public organizations. Psychoanalytic approaches to organizational consultation have not adequately understood the contested nature of public organizations and some key aspects of this approach, such as the concept of the organization's primary task, need to be reconsidered.

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1 This is an ESRC-funded research project called ‘Negotiating Ethical Dilemmas in Contested Communities’, reference number RES-000-23-0127.

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Published In

Volume 59, Issue 2
Pages: 175 - 194
Article first published: February 2006
Issue published: February 2006

Keywords

  1. ambivalence
  2. primary task
  3. social anxieties
  4. value pluralism

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Paul Hoggett
University of the West of England, Bristol, UK [email protected]
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