Ambiguous work definitions sustain client hope for favorable individual treatment

Evidence

Thus, in a world of large and impersonal agencies that apparently hold the keys to important benefits, sanctions, and opportunities, the ambiguity of work definitions sustains hope for a friend in court. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 114

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Clients and workers inhabit structurally incompatible frames of individual need versus aggregate processing — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 459; Ambiguous goals and opaque action-outcome links make established practices self-reinforcing. — Jörg Sydow, Georg Schreyögg, and Jochen Koch, Organizational Path Dependence: Opening…, 94

Broader Connections

• Clients and workers inhabit structurally incompatible frames of individual need versus aggregate processing #complicates (0.75) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 459
• Ambiguous goals and opaque action-outcome links make established practices self-reinforcing. #expands (0.75) — Jörg Sydow, Georg Schreyögg, and Jochen Koch, Organizational Path Dependence, 94