Work-control needs turn frontline workers into defenders of the status quo.

Evidence

Street-level bureaucrats’ needs to control their work situations force them to defend themselves and the current arrangements. Agency expectations and occupational norms preclude the excuse that working conditions prevent effective efforts on clients’ behalf, despite private recognition that this is the case. This defensiveness separates street-level bureaucrats from their potential allies in improving working conditions for mutual benefit. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1329

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the learned pattern that institutions produce their own normative vocabularies which then become self-reproducing.