Digital Mind 🧠

🪵 The Threshold

Caseload reductions only change practice past a threshold, so small cuts do nothing

Properties2
tagsja-picks, xref, causal_relationships, singleton, category/causal-relationships
aliases@lipsky_street-level_2010, loc. 306

2 min read

Caseload reductions only change practice past a threshold, so small cuts do nothing

Evidence

The set effect (Einstellung) could be seen as underlying what might be termed the ‘small increment effect’. Stated simply, in repeated runs of the Trucking Game, the participants do not bother to re-evaluate a procedure established in one circumstance when applying it to another which is only marginally different. If on one occasion I lent you £100, and you paid it back as you said you would, then I am quite likely to see a loan of £125 as essentially the same transaction. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 696 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

With limited resources it might be desirable to add specialists rather than relieve all classes equally. Yet the problem remains that the burden on general classroom teachers would not be ameliorated. This is not to condemn such developments, but only to raise the question whether even substantial increases in public personnel budgets can reduce the work-load pressures enough to make a difference in the way clients are processed if other conditions of work remain the same. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 303 (#builds-on, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: More staff cannot fix client processing if core working conditions stay unchanged — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 303; Informal active-inactive case sorting masks real service shortfalls — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 299; People fail to re-evaluate established procedures when situations change only marginally — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 696

Broader Connections

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