Public processing makes clients compete for scarce worker attention

Evidence

When client processing is done in public, the impression is accurately conveyed that clients are competing with one another for the attention or favor of street-level bureaucrats. As suggested earlier, in the brutal realities of triage, clients perceive that they gain special treatment or the attention of workers only at the expense of other clients. The bureaucratic defense against special treatment is also germane here: “If I give it to you I would Controlling Clients and the Work Situation have to give it to everyone.” — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 860

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Clients can extract concessions through the scarce resource of workers’ time — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 448; Workers’ felt resource scarcity, not actual scarcity, drives routinized client processing — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1480

Broader Connections

• Workers’ felt resource scarcity, not actual scarcity, drives routinized client processing #complicates (0.75) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1480