Grid-group cultural theory and the causal mechanism approach as requisite partners. Explaining enforcement decisions in West European labor inspection

Abstract

As street-level bureaucrats, labour inspectors enjoy much autonomy and discretion in the performance of their job. To avoid that this freedom is abused, two measures are often taken. First, supervisors keep oversight by inspecting their case files. Second, labour inspectors are subjected to a competitive system of targets that encourages competition. These two measures resemble two subtypes of organisational control in grid-group cultural theory, respectively hierarchical and individualistic control. The impact of both types of control has been analysed in an ethnographic case study in four field organisations of a West-European labour inspection. The overarching grid-group cultural theory framework was particularly valuable to illustrate how tensions between hierarchical and individualistic control lead to inconsistencies in the enforcement styles labour inspectors apply. However, it did not seem sufficient to explain why labour inspectors apply a hierarchical enforcement style in some investigations and an individualistic enforcement style in other investigations. This paper illustrates how the integration of grid-group cultural theory with two middle-range theories in the causal mechanism approach (i.e. moral disengagement and role strain theory) could provide such proximate explanations and thus strengthen the exploratory power of grid-group cultural theory.3

Introduction to the Symposium

“…Scholars of public administration, public management, and organizational studies have used this institutional theory to explain puzzles in areas as diverse as urban transport and traffic management (Hendriks ), citizen participative processes in policy‐making (Hoppe , ; Ney and Verweij ; Trousset et al ; Gastil et al ), central–local relations (Stoker ; Entwistle et al ), disagreement over public management reform (Smullen , ), styles of crisis decision‐making (Grint ), user involvement in public services (Simmons et al ; Loyens and Maesschalck ; Simmons ), styles of policing (Frosdick and Odell ; Loyens ; Loyens and Maesschalck ; Hendriks and Van Hulst ), ethics management (Maesschalck ; Loyens and Maesschalck ), crime control and punishment (Vaughan , ; Loyens ), administrative justice (Halliday and Scott ), hospital clinical management (Rayner ), health and social care (Peck et al ; Peck and 6 ), social housing management (Jensen ; Manzi ), land use planning (Coyle ; Harrison and Burgess ; Wolsink ; Swedlow , ; Davy ; Hartmann ), regulation (Coyle ; Lodge et al ; Lodge and Wegrich ; Loyens , , ; Heims ; Linsley et al ), pension reform (Ney ), science and technology assessment (Rayner ; Hoppe and Grin ; Swedlow ), use of voluntary organizations to provide public services (Kendall ), issues in development (e.g. Hoekstra ; Murphy ), decision‐making in government, including core executives (6 , 2016a, 2016b; 6 and Bellamy ), and settlements in various areas of administration (Verweij and Thompson …”