Transferring emotional capital as coerced discretion: Street‐level bureaucrats reconciling structural deficiencies

Abstract

The discretion of street‐level bureaucrats (SLBs) plays a key role in policy implementation. This study offers a new perspective on the meaning of discretion under social policy reforms, which created new structural deficiencies in the work of SLBs and have raised expectations of policy implementation without offering sufficient policy responses. Under such conditions, the discretion of SLBs should be understood as coerced, more so than as a positive element of freedom and choice. As such, SLBs are forced to employ informal practices and provide alternative resources for their clients. Findings indicate a transference of emotional resources from SLBs to clients, aimed at achieving policy outcomes of economically independent citizens, paradoxically accompanied by an awareness of powerful barriers to such conversion. The study contributes both to the understanding of discretion in policy implementation, in the context of an expanding public service gap, and to theories of emotion manifestation in public administration.

The Costs of Customer Service Citizenship Behaviors: A Qualitative Study

“…These informal resources entail not only the investment of extra time and effort, but also the provision of material, emotional and instrumental resources. These results are in line with the notion that, as organizations struggle with the growing need to remain competitive and to reduce costs, the resources required for employees to adequately deliver service to customers might be reduced as well (Lavee and Strier, 2019). When no alternative solutions are offered by the organization, the responsibility remains with service providers, who then have to "do more with less" at their own expense.…”

“…When more resources are invested in the work domain, a deficiency of resources in the non-work domain is created. This might have specific implications for women, due to their primary caretaker role within the family and the female majority in caring and social professions (Lavee and Strier, 2019). Our findings join literature which argues that women workers, especially those employed in social services, tend to conform to social role expectations (Riccucci, 2017) that they be nurturing, patient and able to sense and respond to overall client needs (Guy and Newman, 2004).…”

“…When employees provide their customers with help that goes beyond the call of duty (OCBCs), they are investing their personal time, energy and other resources in those customers. We label these resources as informal resources, because while some resources are sanctioned by the organization and are invested in customers as a formal requirement of the job (e.g., service encounter time), these sanctioned resources often do not suffice to meet the needs of the clientele (Lavee and Strier, 2019). Therefore, informal resources refer to the resources themselves (e.g., personal time) and OCBC refers to the investment of these resources in customers (e.g., spending personal time after work hours with a client).…”

Need, justice and central–local relations: The case of social assistance in China

“…Advocates of law‐based rights argued that discretion disempowered the client and was open to administrative abuse, while supporters of discretion pointed to its flexibility and officials' ability through negotiation to offer what Titmuss (1971) termed creative justice (Beltram 1984; Tummers and Bekkers 2014). A related literature observes the multiple influences on the decision‐taking of street‐level bureaucrats with authors reaching different conclusions (Lipsky 2010; Lavee and Strier 2019; Zhang et al 2020). Some authorities advocate the need for, and merits of, professionalized discretion subject to peer review and underpinned by continuing professional development, while others conclude that the evidence of abuse reinforces the case for prescribed rights and regulatory justice.…”

“…Dibao , therefore, must be rationed rather than allocated. Consequently, local government and field‐staff apply discretion to circumvent the regulations (a phenomenon also increasingly evident outside China in jurisdictions reshaped by austerity and neoliberal ideology [Lavee and Strier 2019]). With regulations being imprecisely drafted, cadres have been able to use Dibao creatively to benefit individuals in situations that might have been impossible under a more tightly prescribed system.…”