Street-level bureaucracy

The resources that street-level bureaucrats have to work are very inadequate. Yet, the demand from the public, or clients, is always increasing. As a result, street-level bureaucrats are constraints to the resources. Street-level bureaucrats also have broad discretion and that’s because of the constraints they are force upon. The resources that they have to work with also make the goals of street-level bureaucrats ambiguous and conflicting. Yet, street-level bureaucrats try to do their best, even though they do not have many resources to work with. They know that they are not doing the “most perfect job,” but they are doing their best with what they have. Street-level bureaucrats do their job so that they can provide services and security to the public, even if they sometime feel that they are taken for granted. In the book, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Public Services, Michael Lipsky (1980) gives an example of some street-level bureaucrats that provides services to the public and what they think of themselves, “the typical teacher, policeman, welfare worker-indeed anyone who regularly meets the public-seems to have an image of himself or herself as working under great strain and with considerable sacrifice to provide clients protection or service no on else would be willing to…

In 1980, Dr. Michael Lipsky released an award-winning book on the concept of street-level bureaucracy. According to his biography on the Georgetown University, Dr. is a Research Professor at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute. He received his Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University and has taught a number of institutions including University of Wisconsin and Harvard University. Along with teaching, Dr. Lipsky has worked with the Ford Foundation and is a Senior Program Director at Demos.…

The performances of public service workers have always been a central topic of theories and reviews in order to implement and enhance their services and dispense a good assistance to clients. Who examined the work of public service workers deeply is Lipsky with his “Street-Level Bureaucracy” (1980). He studied everything that concerns the performances of the so called street-level bureaucrats along with the constraints that they sustain. Lipsky’s theory will be taken into account in connection…

The Street-Level Bureaucracy: The Critical Role of Street-Level Bureaucrats by Michael Lipsky was written to explain the importance of the role of public service workers when delivering government services to the public. The involvement of public administration in difficulties that are currently affecting the undeserved and have made the government to take responsibilities on public safety, health and security. Lipsky believed that government workers play a significant role in our society by…

representation matter in bureaucracies? 2) Does descriptive representation lead to policy formulation and implementation representative of all interest? Of the literature reviewed, the accepted consensus is that descriptive representation is important and generally leads to representative policy making and application. Bureaucracies are political…

Rory to stay at his place with him. This is the type of behavior that we see in stage two. Both Logan and Rory are receiving something out of the exchange and thus it is fine for them to have an affair. Kohlberg states that in these stages, higher levels of reasoning also contain the understanding of the lower reasoning stages. This “hierarchical integration” is due to the fact that these stages always move forward (Kohlberg & Hersh, 1977). Regression is only possible in cases of extreme…

By being efficient, Weber felt that a government could promote economic growth and ensure a steady supply of resources, leading to a better overall quality of life for its citizens. The feelings of workers were not seen as an important factor in Weber’s works, and he felt that many factors, not just economic status, could contribute to a person’s class and quality of life. Social status or a person’s career, for example, could help an individual live a higher class life even if he or she had a…

sake of rationality and efficiency. The development of bureaucracies in order to deal with the large masses is a result of rational thought that is prominent in the Protestant ethic. According to Weber, this leads to a world in which the individual’s freedom is at threat, often trapping them in an iron cage. Weber establishes that the spirit of capitalism is imbedded in the Protestant ethic. He explains that those who are financially successful have roots in Protestantism. This can be explained…

Max Weber, a German social historian, is considered to be the founding father of bureaucracy and defines bureaucracy as the ideal and rational method of organisation, hence the most efficient way of conducting business. Weber built his model on four factors: functional specialisation, hierarchy of authority, a system of rules and impersonality (Weber, 1947) and formulated the concept of bureaucracy as a response to the inadequacies found in earlier forms of organisational structure. Weber…

Bureaucracies have been around for a very long time. According to Volti, a bureaucracy is “an organizational structure based on impersonality, expertise, division of labor, hierarchy, written records, and definitive rules and procedures. The government created a bureaucracy to protect and control the population from other empires or other governments from taking over their businesses. To keep their businesses up to date and to maintain their empire the bureaucracy decided to collect taxes from…