Tenure and street-level bureaucrats: how assessment tools are used at the frontline of the public sector

Anahita Assadi () and Martin Lundin ()
Additional contact information
Anahita Assadi: IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy, Postal: P O Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden
Martin Lundin: IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy, Postal: P O Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden, http://www.ifau.se/en/About-IFAU/Personnel/Researchers-Research-Officers/Martin-Lundin/

No 2015:19, Working Paper Series from IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

Abstract: The tension between governance and professional discretion is a question of constant interest in public administration research, and studies on street-level bureaucracy thus aim to understand the actions of frontline workers. Largely missing in this literature, however, is research on how tenure affects behavior. To fill in this gap, we analyze how caseworkers with varying degrees of tenure respond to steering signals. We study the nationwide introduction of an assessment support tool to be used to assess clients’ needs under the Swedish active labor market policy. We propose that accumulated experiences strengthen frontline workers’ confidence. In turn, this makes them less responsive to formal policy signals, such as the assessment tool. Qualitative and quantitative methods are both used in support of the current research. The analysis suggests that as tenure increases, street-level bureaucrats, especially male caseworkers, tend to use the assessment tool less carefully and act in accordance with policy signals to a lesser extent. The qualitative analysis indicates that this pattern can partly be explained by the fact that increasing experience with meeting clients face-to-face increases caseworkers’ perceived skills and confidence.

Keywords: Street-level bureaucracy; policy implementation; discretion; tenure; assessment support tool; profiling; active labor market policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2015-09-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ifau.se/Upload/pdf/se/2015/wp2015-19-Te ... evel-bureaucrats.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.ifau.se/Upload/pdf/se/2015/wp2015-19-Tenure-and-street-level-bureaucrats.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.ifau.se/Upload/pdf/se/2015/wp2015-19-Tenure-and-street-level-bureaucrats.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2015_019

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy IFAU, P O Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ali Ghooloo ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).