Officially equal treatment masks workers acting on private client preferences.

Evidence

Differentiation among clients may take place because of workers’ preferences for some clients over others. They may prefer some clients over others, despite official norms to the centrary, under at least three circumstances. Ultimately they all reflect the fact that workers find greater gratification in interacting with some clients than with others and have opportunities to act on these preferences. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 793

Categorization

• DEFINE: Lipsky is defining the conditions under which client differentiation occurs despite formal norms — useful for operationalizing ‘discretion’.
• XREF: connects to: Sincere belief in equal treatment coexists with and masks biased allocation. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 820

Broader Connections

• Sincere belief in equal treatment coexists with and masks biased allocation. #corroborates (0.95) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 820