Attrition selects for workers least troubled by the gap between mandate and practice.
Evidence
Idealistic young teachers quit because they cannot tolerate the pettiness of their supervisors or their inability to teach as they would like or were trained to teach. Zealous young attorneys leave jobs as public lawyers in despair over making an improvement in the lives of their poor clients. In some ways these idealists are potentially the most dedicated public employees. In other respects they are least suited to do the work. In any event public agencies are left with a work force least bothered by the discrepancies between what they are supposed to do and what they actually do. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1055
Categorization
- QUESTION: If the most dedicated leave first, does accumulated discretion drift toward cynicism faster than cultural narratives can register the shift?
- XREF: Connects to organizational-behavior and public-sector turnover literature, and to the sociology of professions’ account of ‘moral burnout.’ — connects to: Organizational pressures usually push frontline workers toward rationing, not individualized care. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 732; Rationally adjusting aspirations downward can suppress grievance despite large power gaps — Walter Korpi, The Iceberg of Power below the Surface:…, 6; Employers select immigrant workers for assumed docility and vulnerability.
Broader Connections
- Rationally adjusting aspirations downward can suppress grievance despite large power gaps
#corroborates(0.75) — Walter Korpi, The Iceberg of Power below the Surface, 6 - Employers select immigrant workers for assumed docility and vulnerability.
#expands(0.75)