Purposive Drift

Inflexible, wasteful and harmful

Yet again, Simon Caulkin gets it bang on. Commenting on the Stafford Hospital case, where the Health Commission found that Stafford Hospital's senior management's success in meeting their targets which gained them Foundation status was to the detriment of patient care and may have led to the deaths of 400 people between 2005 and 2008, he concludes:

"The current target-, computer- and inspection-dominated regime for public services is inflexible, wasteful and harmful. But don't take my word for it: in the current issue of Academy of Management Perspectives, a heavyweight US journal, four professors charge that the benefits of goal-setting (ie targets) are greatly oversold and the side-effects equally underestimated. Goal-setting gone wild, say the professors, contributed both to Enron and the present sub-prime disasters. Instead of being dispensed over the counter, targets should be treated "as a prescription-strength medication that requires careful dosing, consideration of harmful side effects, and close supervision".

They even propose a health warning: "Goals may cause systematic problems in organisations due to narrowed focus, increased risk-taking, unethical behaviour, inhibited learning, decreased co-operation, and decreased intrinsic motivation." As a glance at Stafford hospital would tell them, that's not the half of it."