Scarce effort forces workers to invent conceptual divisions that justify their jobs.

Evidence

Street-level bureaucrats who are unable to provide all clients with their best efforts develop conceptual mechanisms to divide up the client population and rationalize the division. The differentiation of clients discussed in previous chapters thus not only provides a rationale for allocating scarce resources, but it also serves to help street-level bureaucrats justifY their jobs to themselves. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1121

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: the routinization of institutionalized stereotypes happens through scarcity-driven sense-making, not top-down narrative — worth an essay on ‘the paperwork theory of prejudice.’
• DEEPTHINKING: The dual function of client differentiation — allocating resources and enabling self-justification — is the precise mechanism the reader’s speed-differential hypothesis requires.
• XREF: connects to: Workers scale back job conceptions to close the gap between capability and goals. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1069; People stereotype groups to justify an existing division of labor; Work structure creates the need for bias while society supplies its content — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1049 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• People stereotype groups to justify an existing division of labor #corroborates (0.95)
• Work structure creates the need for bias while society supplies its content #expands (0.90) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1049
• Workers concede innate differences justify their lower occupational position #corroborates (0.85) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2200