Cream‐skimming at the frontline: The role of administrative literacy

Abstract

The notion of cream‐skimming—defined as the propensity to prioritize clients who have a higher likelihood of meeting bureaucratic success criteria, including organizational goals—is at the heart of street‐level bureaucracies. However, there is often no direct information available to street‐level bureaucrats whether clients will actually meet bureaucratic success criteria. This study argues that street‐level bureaucrats assess clients' potential to reach these criteria via their administrative literacy—a client's capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic information and services from public administrations—as displayed in social interactions. Therefore, this study elaborates on the role of clients' administrative literacy and its effects on cream‐skimming behavior. Using data from two experiments, we show that public employees prioritize clients with higher levels of preparedness and effective communication strategies. These findings suggest that cream‐skimming is not just a rational cost–benefit analysis, but strongly influenced by social dynamics within public encounters.

The Role of Organizational and Client Reactions in Understanding Representative Bureaucracy

“…Thus, they encounter positive and negative responses from those inside and outside their organizations as well as from their clients. Similar to previous studies that emphasize how organizational feedback (Cohen, 2018; Nisar & Masood, 2020) and that from clients (De Boer, 2020; Döring & Jilke, 2022) affect policy implementation, we highlight the role of these responses in understanding how street-level bureaucrats operate. Third, our findings are in line with prior literature underscoring the importance of organizational preferences in understanding street-level bureaucrats’ tendency to actively represent their clients (Keiser et al, 2002; Meier, 2019; Wilkins & Williams, 2008).…”