Increased professionalism sometimes narrows rather than widens frontline discretion

Evidence

Usually, increased professionalization is associated with deference of the society toward occupations, discretionary judgment, citizen trust, and reciprocal altruism, as well as the characteristics mentioned here. However, in some cases the term simply denotes an occupational group’s increased adherence to accepted occupational norms. Thus increased professionalism among police may mean less discretion and greater conformity to legal standards and norms of police conduct. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1844

Categorization

• DEFINE: Disambiguates two senses of professionalization: deference-granted discretion versus norm-conformity that can reduce discretion, as with police.
• XREF: Reverses the common assumption tying professionalism to expanded judgment; connects to treatment of worker discretion and fairness rules reducing bias. — connects to: Street-level bureaucrats are frontline workers exercising substantial job discretion; Rule proliferation paradoxically expands rather than constrains frontline discretion — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 145; Frontline workers can preserve discretion through legal loopholes that bureaucrats cannot close (+2 more)
• QUESTION: Does standardization-as-professionalism give administrators a lever over exactly the discretion earlier chapters show them struggling to control?

Broader Connections

• Academic professionalism and specialization displaces the public intellectual role #expands (0.82)