Workers’ genuine altruism sustains the service myth generation after generation

Evidence

Perhaps even more important in sustaining the myth of service altruism are the workers who attempt to implement the service ideal. Like most social myths this one has a partial basis in reality. Each generation of workers brings to its jobs, in addition to interest in material benefits, dedication to helping people. Those who recruit themselves for public service work are attracted to some degree by the prospect that their lives will gain meaning through helping others. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 542

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Organizational loyalty redirects moral drives toward abject ends without loss of integrity — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 557; Economic institutions perpetuate themselves through reproducing workers’ consciousness — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 1130; Collective worker adaptations become institutionalized as agency service orientations. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1077 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Collective worker adaptations become institutionalized as agency service orientations. #corroborates (0.95) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1077
• Organizational loyalty redirects moral drives toward abject ends without loss of integrity #expands (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 557
• Economic institutions perpetuate themselves through reproducing workers’ consciousness #expands (0.80) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 1130
• Administrative accountability practices erode workers’ client-responsibility and entrench service ineffectiveness over time #complicates (0.75) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1288