Frontline workers obey only those agency policies enforced by significant sanctions

Evidence

Street-level bureaucrats are interested in processing work consistent with their own preferences and only those agency policies so salient as to be backed up by significant sanctions. These sanctions must be limited. If everything receives priority, nothing does. Work-processing devices are part of the informal agency structure that may be necessary to maintain the organization, even though the procedures may be contrary to agency policy. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 186

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s thesis: sanctions-limited compliance is the mechanism by which routinized frontline discretion institutionalizes faster than formal policy change. — connects to: Managers steer workers through informal perks rather than formal sanctions — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 220; Personnel power operates through subtle anticipatory sanctions rather than overt dismissal — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 793

Broader Connections

• Managers steer workers through informal perks rather than formal sanctions #complicates (0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 220
• Personnel power operates through subtle anticipatory sanctions rather than overt dismissal #expands (0.75) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 793