Treating coping practices as optimal suppresses innovation and rationalizes mediocrity.

Evidence

Accepting limitations as fixed rather than as problematic is significant for two reasons. First, it discourages innovation and encourages mediocrity. It is one thing to say that resources are limited, another to say that the practices arising from trying to cope with limited resources are optimal. Yet the tendency to equate what exists with what is best is strong when patterns of practice must be defended psychologically to avoid confrontations with work fail- Second, as I have argued, organizational patterns of practice in streetlevel bureaucracies are the policies of the organization. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1066

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to psychological self-justification literatures; the equating of ‘what exists’ with ‘what is best’ parallels system-justification and adaptive-preference research. — connects to: Work-expansion habits stem from coping with demand unpredictability, not laziness. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 925; Practice rooted in survival coping resists change more than top-down policy does — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1354; Effective community norms constrain behavior and suppress beneficial innovation — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 110 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Effective community norms constrain behavior and suppress beneficial innovation #corroborates (0.90) — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 110
• Practice rooted in survival coping resists change more than top-down policy does #expands (0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1354
• Ambiguous goals and opaque action-outcome links make established practices self-reinforcing. #expands (0.80) — Jörg Sydow, Georg Schreyögg, and Jochen Koch, Organizational Path Dependence, 94
• Practices dismissed as frivolous hold underestimated generative power #expands (0.75)