Street-level bureaucrats are frontline workers exercising substantial job discretion

Evidence

In recent years public employees have benefitted considerably from the growth of public spending on street-level bureaucracies. 12 Salaries have increased from inadequate to respectable and even desirable. Meanwhile, public employees, with street-level bureaucrats in the lead, have secured unprecedented control over their work environments through the development of unions and union-like associations. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 96 (#expands, via linked claim)

It is for this reason that we conclude that stated intentions of street-level bureaucracies to become more client-oriented, to receive more citizen input, and t~ encourage clients to speak out are often questionable, no matter how sincere the administrators who articulate these fine goals. It is dysfunctional to most street-level bureaucracies to become more responsive. … Increases in client demands at one point will only lead to mechanisms to ration services further at another point, assuming sources remain unchanged. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 745 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Frontline workers’ discretionary acts, not stated policy, constitute government action — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 69; Increased professionalism sometimes narrows rather than widens frontline discretion — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1844; Frontline workers can preserve discretion through legal loopholes that bureaucrats cannot close (+3 more)

Related

• Street-level bureaucrats won unprecedented control over their own working conditions through unions. (similarity 0.88)
• Frontline workers’ discretionary acts, not stated policy, constitute government action (similarity 0.84)
• Worker political gains came at the expense of client-oriented service (similarity 0.83)
• It is dysfunctional for most street-level bureaucracies to become more responsive (similarity 0.83)
• Frontline workers can preserve discretion through legal loopholes that bureaucrats cannot close (similarity 0.81)
• The same discretion that lets workers help clients also drives manager-worker conflict (similarity 0.81)
• Work discretion and human variety partly counteract alienation and sustain agency fealty (similarity 0.78)
• Frontline workers feel resource scarcity as a lived tension between client care and efficiency (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Frontline workers can preserve discretion through legal loopholes that bureaucrats cannot close #expands (0.82)
• Street-level bureaucrats won unprecedented control over their own working conditions through unions. #expands (0.75) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 96
• It is dysfunctional for most street-level bureaucracies to become more responsive #qualifies (0.72) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 745