Bureaucratization eroded the paternalism that once rewarded frontline workers
Evidence
Civil service and other developments have made worker recruitment more universalistic. This development may also have affected the extent to which workers are able to help clients and see the results of their efforts because treatment of clients has also become more universalistic. Congruity between the social background of workers and clients does not have the same place in public service interactions as it used to. The fabled paternalism of social workers and school teachers in the past may have functioned to give street-level bureaucrats a sense of responsibility and reward for outcomes, even if these gratifications were founded on inequalities and favoritism. Thus the bureaucratization of public service may have been accompanied by increased worker alienation. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 595
Categorization
- XREF: The reader has emphasized frontline-worker discretion and stereotyping; this links bureaucratization’s loss of paternalistic reward to how workers now relate to clients — a cultural-change variable against which stereotype institutionalization can be timed. — connects to: Spatial segregation weakens paternalism’s coercive power over subordinates; Decline of middle-class ownership eroded the family’s role and paternal authority; Worker political gains came at the expense of client-oriented service
- DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely counterintuitive claim: the very reforms that made public service fairer and more universalistic also stripped workers of the personal stake in outcomes that paternalistic favoritism supplied — bureaucratization priced out the psychological reward that discretion used to buy.
- QUESTION: Worth chasing: if paternalism supplied the reward motive, what replaced it after universalism? The answer bears directly on whether rules alone can reproduce the old commitment.