Availability of information. — Different 

 goals require different types of information or 

 specific data. Whether or not a particular goal 

 can be achieved is in large measure deter- 

 mined by the availability of the requisite in- 

 formation. As Vaux (1968, p. 800-801) 

 states, "However well conceived it may be on 

 other grounds, a goal which invokes needs for 

 information which are difficult or impossible 

 to fulfill may be completely ineffective in its 

 influence on decisionmaking." 



Complexity. — Goals are seldom either sin- 

 gle or simple. Ttye interrelations of various ob- 

 jectives, none of which can be ignored, com- 

 plicate the choice among alternatives. If a gov- 

 ernment, agency, entrepreneur, or decision- 

 maker in any area has only one goal, its opti- 

 mizing behavior — the most effective course 

 toward the goal — is clearly evident. A rising 

 demand for wood for housing, for example, 

 could be met by simply increasing the harvest 

 of timber from private and public forested 

 lands, if no other consequences were impor- 

 tant. But obviously the public interest de- 

 mands consideration of other goals than hous- 

 ing. The potential of the forest to provide for 

 recreation, habitat for fish and wildlife, water 

 supply, and other needs cannot be destroyed 

 in satisfying the need for wood. There are 

 conflicts between objectives, and these must 

 be specified before the decisionmaking proc- 

 ess can go on. 



Consistency. — To be useful, a goal must 

 be applicable at all levels of an organization. 

 Policies determined at higher staff levels are 

 sometimes viewed as constraints by lower- 

 level staff members. Unless there is a common 

 understanding, this view that "one man's goal 

 is another man's constraint" can easily lead to 

 conflicts within the management structure. 

 The activities, policies, and goals of subunits 

 of an organization must be totally related to 

 the goals of higher level management. Other- 

 wise a process of suboptimization sets in that 

 prevents achievement of the ultimate objec- 

 tive. The goal-oriented decision model pre- 

 sented later in this paper can be viewed as a 

 high-level management goal. It should not be 

 construed as an idealistic one that does not 

 apply to the lower-level organization. At low- 

 er levels, subgoals must be defined that are 



consistent with the overriding goal, if optimal 

 decisionmaking is to be achieved. 



Goal Ranking 



As indicated above, the optimizing behav- 

 ior to achieve multiple or complex goals can- 

 not be easily specified from the goals them- 

 selves. Conceivably, for example, the Forest 

 Service might operate with the following two 

 goals: to maximize profit and to maximize 

 revenue from sales of timber on the public 

 lands. 2 It should be obvious (and is verified 

 by economic theory) that the action that 

 would maximize profit would not necessarily 

 be optimal, because it is highly unlikely that 

 maximum profit and maximum sales revenue 

 can be achieved simultaneously. In fact, with- 

 out additional information, no action taken 

 by the Forest Service could be deemed opti- 

 mal given those two goals. It is only when the 

 goals are ranked or weighted so as to indicate 

 the priorities, the dominant and subordinate 

 goals, or the acceptable trade-offs between 

 goals, that optimality will become manifest. 



Value and Weight 



It is important that a clear distinction be 

 made between the term "value" on the one 

 hand, and "weight" on the other. Value is a 

 quantitative estimate of a quality of useful- 

 ness, importance, desirability; in economics it 

 is a measure of the degree to which a certain 

 action or thing satisfies human wants. Value is 

 often defined as the power of a commodity to 

 command other commodities in exchange for 

 itself. Value is a quantitative measure that al- 

 lows comparison between different things. 

 Weights allow the consideration of benefits 

 that cannot be measured in strictly quantita- 

 tive terms. It is possible that two policies that 

 yield equal values in monetary terms will not 

 be viewed by the decisionmaker as equivalent 

 in terms of the benefits to be obtained. In es- 

 sence, weights may be viewed as the expres- 

 sion of the premium placed on the outcome 



2 Note that these examples are in no way to be 

 taken as goals the agency "ought" to pursue. This 

 study is concerned with the goals set forth in legisla- 

 tion, not with those suggested by individuals or 

 groups. 



5 



