Agency behavior reflects routines, incentives, and tasks, not just formal charts.
Wilson's 1989 argument that agency behaviour is driven by the tasks operators actually perform and the incentives around them, not by the mission statement or the organisation chart.
In practice
- An agency whose stated mission is prevention spends nine-tenths of its staff time processing applications, because that is what its people are rewarded for.
- Reading an organisation's chart tells you less about what it does than watching what its front line spends the afternoon on.