Competition among agencies rarely disciplines them because tenure and union rules blunt market signals.

Evidence

In theory this bureaucratic competition might provide precisely what bureaucracies importantly lack-a substitute for market place accountability. This, of course, is the idea behind educational vouchers. However, the healing effects of competition are too often mitigated by the residual bureaucratic aspects of the competing organizations. Faculty members in academic departments with declining enrollments are still protected by the tenure system, rewards for research (and bringing in research grants), and other factors that protect them from being assessed solely on criteria of service to students. Similarly, educational voucher experiments have foundered on teachers’ tenure, union opposition, and parental inability to express preferences within the system for lack of information on the implications of the available choices. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 685

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Organizations rarely sustain attention that is simultaneously vigilant and pluralist — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 344

Broader Connections

• Organizations rarely sustain attention that is simultaneously vigilant and pluralist #complicates (0.75) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 344