ABSTRACT
Public organizations carry out tasks on behalf of society. In higher education, for example, this might entail preparing study reforms through a government ministry and implementing new study programmes through public universities and colleges. Organizations can thus be understood as tools or instruments for achieving certain goals seen as important in society, such as raising the standard of higher education. In one sense, this can be expressed partly as public organizations and their members acting with instrumental rationality in fulfilling tasks and achieving the desired results. This entails members of an organization assessing the available alternatives or tools according to their consequences and in relation to the chosen goals, making wilful choices between alternatives and achieving the effects desired through those choices. Yet instrumentality can also be expressed in the structural design of an organization
is determined and formed.
