Workers elicit client compliance by invoking their subordinate position within the bureaucracy

Evidence

Street-level bureaucrats often attempt to involve clients in the difficulties of their jobs in order to gain understanding or sympathy for their position. Assertions that ”I’m just doing my job,” or ”I’m following orders” help bring the client to an agency point of view. The client is implicitly asked to abandon his or her own interest in the interaction in a friendly, not overtly conflictual tone. But there is little choice involved, since the structure of the institution requires the client to comply or else risk alienating the more powerful street-level bureaucrat. No doubt many workers genuinely assert such claims, and they are often genuinely appreciated by clients. Still, in potentially conflictual stuations these claims function to gain client compliance in a persuasive rather than coercive way. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 492

Categorization

• XREF: Ties to the obedience/diffusion-of-responsibility literature (Milgram-style ‘just following orders’) and to how organizational position becomes a shield for individual discretion. — connects to: Client compliance stems from worker power over benefits rather than command or coercion — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 442; A government investigation into a company transforms workplace atmosphere into fear and secrecy — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action , 977