The unit is composed of civilian professionals, sworn personnel, and clerical staff. Its major function is to gather data appropriate to specific management problems and coordinate and process this information as an aid to decisionmaking. During the observation period, the unit received 14 requests for its services. The requests required that unit members simultaneously resolve three somewhat different problems: the immediate proximate problem of producing a data base report; the need to determine what is behind the request, a problem requiring a socially mediated process of reality construction to solve; and justification of the activity in terms of the unit's self-definition, which is anchored in a rational management model. Requests for service produce a socially problematic situation for the unit, whose task presumably is anchored in scientific problemsolving procedures. In actuality, however, the organizational environment produces conflicting demands associated with the legitimation of existing practices or administrative decisions, the balancing of competing interests, and the protection of both the unit and the requester. 16 references.