Street-level discretion, emotional labour and welfare frontline staff at the Australian employment service providers

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tran Nguyen ◽  
Selvaraj Velayutham
Keyword(s):  
Service Providers ◽  
Employment Service ◽  
Frontline Staff ◽  
Emotional Labour ◽  
Street Level

Labour Input Logic of Street-Level Bureaucrats: Evidence from Chinese Market Supervision Commission

2021 ◽  
pp. 147892992110215
Author(s):  
Chunna Li ◽  
Jun Yang
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Climate ◽  
Time Allocation ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Strong Impact ◽  
Chinese Market ◽  
Frontline Staff ◽  
Street Level ◽  
Labour Input ◽  
Street Level Bureaucrats

The theory of street-level bureaucracy and its relevant data have proven the expected duties of the frontline staff of local government may be excessive but their time spent working remains quite low. Using data from participatory observations of street-level officials in a Chinese city, this study reveals the logic of this labour input paradox. Organizational climate incentive and promotional incentive jointly influence the time allocation of street-level bureaucrats. The organizational climate incentive reflects the weak incentive characteristic of the maintenance function of labour; promotional incentives have a strong impact on motivation, which is characteristic of the promotional function of labour. These findings reveal the costs of the New Public Management movement in an organization lacking an effective promotion mechanism and a positive organizational climate incentive. This is a snapshot of the dilemma faced by China’s public organization reforms, but it is also a problem other country must solve.

‘Street-level justifications’: Service providers mediating refugee reception in the urban context of Istanbul

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
AyŞen Üstübici
Keyword(s):  
Service Providers ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Migrant Populations ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
Displaced Populations ◽  
Street Level ◽  
Cultural Similarity ◽  
Level Analysis

Abstract This article discusses the mediating role of service providers between citizens and refugee reception policies. Based on an analysis of interviews with local government officials and NGO workers and observations in two districts of Istanbul, I examine the ‘street-level justifications’ that service providers use to counter anti-refugee resentments expressed by the citizens. The article suggests that as street-level bureaucrats endeavour to justify their work with refugees through three types discursive strategies; cultural similarity, call for empathy, and pragmatic explanations. Such strategies by constantly re-defining us and them, bear implications for social cohesion. The article offers a meso-level analysis of refugee reception policies in the Turkish context and highlights the limits of initial hospitality. The findings have wider implications for other contexts where the settlement of displaced or migrant populations is rather nascent, policies are top-down and where bureaucratic structures mediate among displaced populations, citizens, and the resources available to them.

scholarly journals Investigating the CEO of a MAT: Examining practices and positions on ‘the street’

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 478-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belinda C Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Chief Executive Officer ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Chief Executive Officers ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Chief Executive ◽  
Business Networks ◽  
Educational Service ◽  
Street Level ◽  
Executive Officers

The emergence of Chief Executive Officers as leaders of educational service providers is positioned in multi academy trusts, the preferred structure of schooling in England. Within this structure, the Chief Executive Officer position is distinct and different from previous constructs of headteachers, since the Chief Executive operates at both street level, that is within the MAT, and beyond ‘the street’. In this article, I argue that a new conceptualisation of the headteacher is needed to explain the emerging position and practices of the Chief Executive Officer. These include the interface with the market, adopting entrepreneurial dispositions and constructing professional and business networks. I typologise these practices and positioning through the analysis of empirical data gathered from the Leadership of the Lawrence Trust Project and its Chief Executive Officer, KT Edwards.

scholarly journals Walking the Talk of Social Equity? Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Decisionmaking About the Provision of Personal Resources

2021 ◽  
pp. 027507402110505
Author(s):  
Einat Lavee
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Social Service ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Social Equity ◽  
Personal Resources ◽  
Personal Resource ◽  
Social Service Providers ◽  
Street Level ◽  
Street Level Bureaucrats

While public administration scholars argue that core values of social equity are exceedingly important in service provision, less is known of how these values are practised on the frontline in the contemporary public administration. Research points to a dual trend: together with practices aimed at increasing clients’ wellbeing, public service workers’ decisions about allocating public resources are guided by moral perceptions of worthiness, leaving behind the most weakened populations. The current study aims to decipher this duality, analyzing street-level bureaucrats’ decisionmaking about providing personal resources to low-income clients, in order to examine whether the pursuit of social equity is manifested in informal practices. Drawing on indepth qualitative interviews of social service providers in Israel, we found that decisionmaking about personal resource provision is grounded in two distinct sets of values. Alongside a pattern of providing resources to deserving clients, street-level bureaucrats also provide them to clients typically considered undeserving. These latter practices are aimed at decreasing social inequality, demonstrating that social service providers often walk the talk of social equity.

scholarly journals Care transitions as street-level work

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 196-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Foster ◽  
Desley Harvey ◽  
Rachel Quigley ◽  
Edward Strivens
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Quality Care ◽  
Care Transitions ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Street Level ◽  
Local Setting ◽  
Front Line Workers

Purpose Quality care transitions of older people across acute, sub-acute and primary care are critical to safety and cost, which is the reason interventions to improve practice are a priority. Yet, given the complexity of providers and services involved it is often difficult to know the types of tensions that arise in day-to-day transition work or how front-line workers will respond. To that end, this innovative study differs from the largely descriptive studies by conceptualising care transitions as street-level work in order to capture how transition practice takes shape within the complexities and dynamics of the local setting. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from 23 hospital health professionals and community service providers across primary, sub-acute and acute care through focus groups. A thematic analysis and interrogation of themes using street-level concepts derived three key themes. Findings The themes of risk logics and dilemmas of fragmentation make explicit both the local constraints and opportunities of care transitions and how these intersect to engender a particular logic of practice. By revealing the various discretionary tactics adopted by front-line providers, the third theme simultaneously highlights how discretionary spaces might represent both possibilities and problematics for balancing organisational and patient needs. Originality/value The study contributes to the knowledge of street-level work in health settings and specifically, the nature of transition work. Importantly, it benefits policy and practice by uncovering mechanisms that could facilitate and impede quality transitions in discrete settings.

PP9 Managing alcohol intoxication in the night-time economy: staff and patient perspectives

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (10) ◽  
pp. e5.2-e5
Author(s):  
Andy Irving ◽  
Davina Allen ◽  
Joanne Blake ◽  
Simon Moore ◽  
Steve Goodacre
Keyword(s):  
Emergency Services ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Care Pathway ◽  
Alcohol Intoxication ◽  
Alternative Pathway ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Night Time ◽  
Ambulance Personnel ◽  
Frontline Staff ◽  
Street Level

BackgroundAlcohol-related harms arising in the Night-Time Economy (NTE) impose a substantial burden on emergency services (ES) especially ambulance services engaged in both street level care and transportation of acutely intoxicated patients to a hospital Emergency Department (ED). Alcohol Intoxication Management Services (AIMS) are intended as an alternative care pathway for intoxicated patients who would normally use emergency services and are often run by ambulance services in partnership with other agencies. Despite growing policy interest in AIMS as an alternative pathway it is not known what their users think of them nor the experiences of frontline staff engaged in and around AIMS.MethodsAs part of a mixed-method study semi-structured interviews were followed by a survey of users recruited from six different AIMS. A parallel ethnographic component used observations and interviews with ambulance staff in two cities with AIMS and one without.ResultsSurveys and interviews found AIMs users retrospectively viewed the decision to take them to AIMS favourably and highly rated the care they received, especially the friendly, non-judgemental atmosphere created between ambulance staff and other agents involved in AIMS. A majority of AIMS survey respondents said they would not have called emergency services (85%) or gone to the ED (75.6%). Ethnographic work showed ambulance personnel considered AIMS to have a positive impact on ES, freeing capacity to attend to other emergencies. Ambulance staff without AIMS worked to avoid conveyance to ED but this could result in extended periods risk assessing individuals at street level, which meant they felt unavailable to address other emergency calls.ConclusionsAIMS are viewed very positively by their users and the ambulance staff involved. Findings from surveys, interviews and ethnography suggest that AIMS and EDs are managing different patient groups in different ways, and thus may represent complementary rather than competing alternatives care pathways.

Occupational Therapists as Street-Level Bureaucrats: Leveraging the Political Nature of Everyday Practice

2019 ◽  
Vol 87 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca M. Aldrich ◽  
Debbie Laliberte Rudman
Keyword(s):  
Service Providers ◽  
Occupational Therapists ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Street Level ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Street Level Bureaucrats ◽  
Professional Power ◽  
Exercise Of Discretion

Background. As front-line service providers who often work in systems regulated by governmental bodies, occupational therapists can be conceptualized as “street-level bureaucrats” ( Lipsky, 1980/2010 ) who effect and are affected by policy. Purpose. Drawing on understandings from a study of long-term unemployment, this article proposes that occupational therapists, as street-level bureaucrats, respond to inter-related policies and systems in ways that can perpetuate, resist, or transform opportunities for doing and being. Key Issues. By highlighting practitioners’ everyday negotiation of governmental, organizational, and professional power relations, the notion of street-level bureaucracy illuminates the political nature of practice as well as the possibilities and boundaries that policy can place on ideal forms and outcomes of practice. Implications. Framing occupational therapists as street-level bureaucrats reinforces practitioners’ situatedness as political actors. Mobilizing this framing can enhance awareness of occupational therapists’ exercise of discretion, which can be investigated as a basis for occupation-focused and emancipatory forms of practice.

The Street-Level Organisation in-between Employer Needs and Client Needs: Creaming Users by Motivation in the Norwegian Employment and Welfare Service (NAV)

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
HEIDI MOEN GJERSØE ◽  
ANNE HEGE STRAND
Keyword(s):  
Supported Employment ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Demand Side ◽  
Frontline Staff ◽  
Welfare Service ◽  
Street Level ◽  
Employer Engagement ◽  
Structural Demand ◽  
Job Coaches ◽  
Oriented Approach

Abstract Employer engagement is increasingly emphasised in the context of efforts to bring more disadvantaged people into work. A new approach in the Norwegian Employment and Welfare Service (NAV) combines demand-side and supply-side measures in a ‘combined workplace-oriented approach’. Through qualitative interviews with frontline staff – including job coaches following the Supported Employment (SE) method – the paper examines the intermediary role of the street-level organisation (SLO) through the targeted use of SE methods directed at young users and employers. The findings suggest that young users are ‘creamed by motivation’ into the SE programme, which can be explained by the importance the SLO places: on maintaining inter-organisational relationships with employers, on job coaches’ performance goals and the need to uphold an organisational structure in the SLO that seemingly works efficient to shift caseloads of young unemployed into work. Hence, creaming is not specific to outsourcing but can also occur when insourcing employer engagement services into a public SLO. Although relational work directed at both employers and young clients is seen as the benefit of a combined workplace-oriented approach, it appears a rather flimsy foundation for successful ALMPs unless supported by more structural demand-side measures.

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