Mass-processing management displaces the client-orientation goals that justify agencies.
Evidence
The particular difficulty with labels ascribed by street-level bureaucrats, as we have seen, is that the characteristics on which they are based are problematic. Judgments concerning the status allocated by street-level bureaucrats depend upon the discretion of the bureaucrat, which in tum depends upon many indeterminate factors, such as training, the social context in which the client is presented, and the presence or absence of similar “differences” in the client population. The fast-track students in the above illustration might have been labeled slow learners in white, middle-class schools (the students and teachers were black). A criminal offense in one setting might be overlooked in another. The social construction of the client, involving the client, others relevant to the client, and the public employees with whom they must deal is a significant process of social definition often unrelated to objective factors and therefore open to the influences of prejudice, stereotype, and ignorance as a basis for determinations. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 529 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Categorization
- recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
- XREF: connects to: Street-level policy is immediate and personal while large programs operate at distance; Agencies evaluate what is measurable rather than what clients get. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 409; Worker political gains came at the expense of client-oriented service (+1 more)
Related
- Client labels depend more on setting and discretion than objective traits (similarity 0.87)
- Worker political gains came at the expense of client-oriented service (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Worker political gains came at the expense of client-oriented service
#corroborates(0.90) - Client labels depend more on setting and discretion than objective traits
#expands(0.72) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 529