Putting Street-Level Organizations First: New Directions for Social Policy and Management Research

This symposium offers an approach to policy and management research that puts organizations first, specifically, the street-level organizations that bring policy directly to people (Lipsky 1980). This approach recognizes that street-level organizations are more than mere conduits for social policy. Beyond their obvious importance as policy implementers, street-level organizations put their own imprint on policy and, in the process, effectively determine “who gets what, when and how” (Lasswell 1958). Directly investigating how these organizations operate as policy intermediaries opens up a broad set of important questions at the intersection of policy, management, and organizational studies. Contributions to this symposium treat street-level organizations as the vantage point from which to examine questions about social policy and management. In adopting this perspective, they give analytic primacy to lower level discretion in policy implementation. But in contrast to principal-agent theory, this approach does not necessarily regard discretion as a matter of either “compliance” or “subversion.” Rather, it is interested in what influences, and especially what systematizes, the exercise of discretion, producing informal organizational routines that effectively constitute policy on the ground. The street-level approach also differs from policy studies of “what works” or management studies linking specific interventions to particular outcomes or outputs. Instead, it seeks to illuminate how organizations work, considering both their internal dynamics and their relationship to the larger polity and society. This research is either theory driven or theoretically grounded, allowing for systematic inquiry into what street-level organizations construct as policy through their informal practices, how they do it, and why they produce policy in the ways that they do. Research that puts street-level organizations first aims at the opaque spaces between formal policies and outcomes, in part, by making visible the organizational mechanisms that link (or de-link) them. But it does more than that. It also extends analysis beyond expected, preferred, or even acknowledged outputs and outcomes. It builds on the premise that what street-level organizations do in the name of policy is not limited to what formal policy would seem to require. It challenges the researcher to consider street-level organizations as embedded in the broader political economy and society and, therefore, to take up questions about what else street-level organizations do when they do policy work. By opening a window on what goes on inside organizations, it provides a perspective from which to consider the relationship of street-level practices to social and political forces ostensibly at work outside these organizations. Managerial strategies have critical importance because they affect the informal dynamics of street-level practice and, thus, alter how organizations work and what they produce. The street-level approach to policy research links scholarly work from related fields, among them research on human services organizations, street-level bureaucracy, policy implementation, public management, and social politics. Although work in each of these fields stands on its own, the problem is that, indeed, it usually does. A street-level lens provides strategies for investigating questions of common interest located at the intersection of these fields. Its central task is to expose the informal practices through which policies—and by extension social politics and social relations—are effectively negotiated, although rarely explicitly so. It seeks to make visible and understandable informal organizational practices that otherwise can escape analytic scrutiny and even recognition. Each of the contributions to this symposium adopts an approach that places street-level organizations at the analytic center. Although they share a common concern with welfare policy, they differ in their theoretical and applied interests. Soss, Schram and Fording use street-level organizational research to illuminate how Florida's welfare-to-work agencies responded to contracting arrangements. Their investigation takes seriously the possibilities for informal adaptation to contract provisions and management. It extends beyond questions of efficiency to assess the consequences of informal organizational practices for innovation and responsiveness as well as for the imposition of “discipline” in welfare policy and practice. These findings have implications for the literatures on contracting and, more broadly, the politics of social regulation. In her contribution, Watkins-Hayes probes the assumptions of representative bureaucracy theory, questioning the extent to which street-level practitioners respond to cues based on social identity. Examining race and ethnicity in welfare casework, she discovers that under certain conditions process demands (red tape) trump racial or ethnic identity as a major influence on informal practice. Or, as she succinctly puts it, “the most powerful color in the bureaucracy” is red. These findings have implications, not only for representative bureaucracy theory but also for the sociology of race. In my article, I examine street-level adaptations to new managerialism. The article sets out a model of choice and constraint in street-level practice that challenges implicit assumptions underlying incentives-based management. It uses ethnographic methods to expose informal ways in which street-level organizations not only respond but also adapt to managerial strategies as they construct welfare reform in everyday organizational life. The findings have implications, not only for public management but more broadly for the politics of the welfare state. As these articles illustrate, a street-level lens can be used to address diverse policy and management questions and also to probe matters of broad political and sociological interest. Studies adopting this approach may utilize a variety of methodologies, quantitative and qualitative, and draw on data from administrative agencies, survey research, interviews, observation, and organizational ethnography, often in combination. The examples offered in this symposium are intended to highlight some of the ways in which this approach can be used to inform policy and management research. Of course, the work presented here does not stand alone. As the rich body of references cited in this issue attests, this work is part of a wider literature that is concerned with street-level organizations but that does not necessarily recognize a common enterprise. This symposium aims to broaden understanding of this approach and encourage the next generation of policy and management studies that put street-level organizations first. Articles were developed from papers presented at an international symposium on Welfare States in Transition: Social Policy Transformation in Organizational Practice convened at the University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration (SSA), May 15, 2009. The editor is grateful to SSA, the international research network Research on Employment Services Quorum, and the Danish Social Science Research Council for supporting the conference. Publication of this symposium would not have been possible without support from the School of Social Service Administration and from JPART, with special thanks to George Frederickson. In developing their articles for this issue, contributing authors benefited from comments provided by Jessica Darrow, Norma Kriger, Michael Lipsky, Gregory Marston, Omar McRoberts, Florian Sichling, William Sites, Matthew Spitzmueller, and several anonymous reviewers.