Foundations of Relating: Theory and Evidence on the Formation of Street‐Level Bureaucrats’ Workplace Networks

Abstract

Despite the importance of peers in forming role expectations, fostering group identity, and facilitating job learning, limited theory and empirical evidence exist on the antecedents of street-level peer relationships. To address this gap, the authors draw on social capital and social exchange theories to develop hypotheses about the micro-social foundations of street-level bureaucrats' peer selection. The hypotheses are tested using a rich data set from an intraorganizational network of teachers in a large urban school implementing a reform that strongly promoted frontline innovation. Both structural and instrumental considerations, such as seeking peers possessing characteristics and resources valued by the reform, figure prominently in the work relations of street-level bureaucrats. These results imply that the introduction of improvement initiatives requiring frontline participation, in addition to altering work practices, may also alter social networks within the frontline of an organization in a manner that favors some frontline workers over others. Practitioner Points• Peer interactions help frontline workers implement improvement initiatives and make sense of desired changes. • Instrumental considerations play an important role in determining peers in the workplace. • Frontline workers are more likely to form work relationships with peers possessing locally valued resources.• The design and implementation of policies aimed at organizational change, in addition to potentially changing the way work is done within an organization, can also impact who is important inside an organization. • Failure to take networks of work relations into account could limit the impact of human resource practices and organizational reforms within organizations.

Strength of Strong Ties in Intercity Government Information Sharing and County Jurisdictional Boundaries

“…For that reason, the use of ERGM to test hypotheses on social relations within a network can be easily found in social sciences research. Public administration is no exception (e.g., Berardo and Lubell ; Feiock, Lee, and Park ; Ingold and Leifeld ; Nisar and Maroulis ). This study employs ERGM to estimate the effects of covariates on the ties in a network configuration while estimating parameters describing the forms of dependence (Cranmer and Desmarais ) that can exist in relational data.…”

“…In interpreting the ERGM results, conceptualization of an ERGM is useful as a logistic regression that predicts the existence of a tie between a pair of individuals (Nisar and Maroulis ). Thus, the prediction in an ERGM is a function of individual‐level, dyadic, and higher‐order structural variables, where “estimated coefficients indicate the correspondence between a one‐unit change in the predictor and the log odds of the tie existing” (Nisar and Maroulis , 833).…”

How social networks affect policy implementation: An analysis of street‐level bureaucrats' performance regarding a health policy

“…In an analysis of the articles published in prominent journals between 2003 and 2017, we found 278 articles on SLBs. The abstracts of these articles suggested that only five of them mobilized relational dimensions in the analysis (De Corte, Verschuere, & De Bie, ; Maroulis, ; Nisar & Maroulis, ; Siciliano, ; Siciliano, ). Additionally, these articles only consider social relationships among peers and neglect bureaucrat–citizen relations.…”

Do Political Similarities Facilitate Interlocal Collaboration?

“…For example, there are material inducements, social incentives, and commitments that are created for a common purpose (Hirsch ). The literature has examined how existing relational ties are utilized in mobilization (Calhoun ; Oberschall ; Pinard ), and some literature has investigated on how emergent solidarity is generated in community groups (Feiock, Lee, and Park ; Musso and Weare ; Nisar and Maroulis ; Siciliano ; Siciliano et al ). The recognition of the solidarity‐formation process is linked to discussions of political homophily during collaboration.…”