Clients can extract concessions through the scarce resource of workers’ time

Evidence

First, street-level bureaucrats characteristically are pressed with heavy case loads and demands for quick decisions, so that clients can impose salient costs merely by taking workers’ time. Since time may be fairly cheap for clients, or their needs high relative to the value they place on their time, clients potentially have a store of resources with which to affect their relationships with street-level bureaucrats. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 448

Categorization

• QUESTION: Does this predicted power imbalance vary by welfare-state regime or client population in ways the reader’s hypothesis about routinization speed would predict?
• XREF: connects to: Time-strapped workers remain vulnerable to clients who exploit time as leverage.; Public processing makes clients compete for scarce worker attention — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 860; Frontline agencies award scarce resources to clients who threaten disruption. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1029

Broader Connections

• Time-strapped workers remain vulnerable to clients who exploit time as leverage. #corroborates (0.95)
• Public processing makes clients compete for scarce worker attention #expands (0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 860