Frontline workers sabotage reforms that threaten their client interactions.

Evidence

Street-level bureaucrats, however, may devise ways to sabotage management efforts to reduce interactions with clients. The costs of achieving compliance in the face of workers’ resistance may sometimes be more than managers want to pay. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 729

Categorization

• XREF: Links to labor-process and street-level discretion literatures on informal work practices defeating formal reform.