Endless reform initiatives debase reform’s currency and mask unchanging practice

Evidence

The volume of pilot programs, demonstration projects, and innovations in management and personnel practices presents the image of frequent reconstitution of public agencies. This proBigacy of reform confuses a public that cannot possibly assess the programs undertaken in the name of reform and rarely experiences results of such reforms directly. The pluralism of the social service industry tends to credit virtually any kind of change so long as it has its origins in a legitimate source (which rarely includes clients). Thus the currency of reform is debased. With so many reform proposals no one change seems better than any other change. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1357

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: perpetual ‘innovation’ as an alibi — how the volume of reform programs signals change while entrenching the very practice it claims to fix.
• XREF: Connects to literature on institutional isomorphism and to the reader’s interest in how administrative routine survives beneath churn.