Work discretion and human variety partly counteract alienation and sustain agency fealty

Evidence

I have already indicated how some of the shared working conditions of street-level bureaucrats appear to be characteristically unalienated. For example, discretion about clients separates street-level bureaucrats from assembly line workers in two respects. Bureaucrats make decisions about the product of their work and they work with (or on) people, so that they are constantly confronted with the variety of humanity. (For p01ice officers the most rewarding aspect of an otherwise often unrewarding job is the variety of situations and people they encounter.) To the extent that the pressures of the job do not entirely narrow these opportunities, aspects of street-level bureaucrats’ work contribute to their fealty toward the diffuse objectives of their agencies. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 567

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the book’s earlier dilemma framing — discretion is both the source of policy-making power and the lever for client abuse; here it also produces loyalty to ‘diffuse objectives.’ — connects to: The same discretion that lets workers help clients also drives manager-worker conflict — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 215; Machine-dominated work environments produced human alienation from organic nature. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 336