The concept of organizational goals, although basic to the study of complex organizations, is no longer analyzed frequently by organizational researchers. The discipline of organizational studies began by concentrating on organizational goals, but by the 1960s researchers had found the concept inadequate as an explanatory variable. They moved to the concept of individual goals but by the 1970s found this approach inadequate, too. They began analyzing organizations as systems. However, the organizational goal concept remains essential for organizational analysis. Mohr has suggested looking at organizational goals as the "collective intent" of an organization's members; collective intent refers to a certain level of agreement reached by an organization's members around particular behaviors. It is recognized, of course, that organizational goals interact with members' personal goals. Discussion of the organizational goal concept is further hampered by terminological problems, the differences between "official" and "real" goals, the problem of goals'"operationality," and the phenomena of goal change, goal displacement (where means become ends), and goal succession (where new goals are set as old ones are attained). The discipline needs to establish the significance of goals, however, to devise methods of discussing how well an organization is doing. (Author/RW)