The study of organizational domains is an important yet elusive subject. Conventionally, domain is defined as the technology employed, population served, and services rendered by an organization. The task environment is the obverse of domain–literally everything else. Domain consensus is a “set of expectations both for members of an organization and for others with whom they interact, about what the organization will and will not do” (Thompson, 1967: 26–29). These definitions, although an improvement over simplistic notions of organizational goals, leave considerable ambiguity; and the range of organizations to which they apply is also unclear. The ambiguity occurs because domains and domain consensus are not static. An organization's products and clientele may change over time, and these changes may occur due to organizational action or shifts in the environment. In other words, domains may be either independent or dependent variables. Concern as to whether concept of domain applies to all organizations arises because some, especially administrative bureaus, do not have tangible products. Instead, they make decisions. One can easily speak of a firm's share of the market, but the arena of action reserved to a public bureaucracy is not so easily determined. Indeed, statutes establishing administrative bureaus can be deliberately vague.

In this chapter, organizational domains will be investigated by studying patterns of change among departments of finance, comptrollers' offices, departments of administration, and the like. The analysis hinges on some assumptions about the behavior of public bureaus such as finance agencies that require elaboration and justification. The first assumption is that because the concept of domain is ambiguous in several respects for these agencies, only the effects of claims to domain can be examined.