Toward a General Analytic Framework: Organizational Settings, Policy Goals, and Street-Level Behavior

In: Administration & society, Band 38, Heft 3, S. 335-364

Abstract

The way frontline workers in human service organizations implement policy is greatly influenced by how their jobs are structured within particular organizational settings. Although scholars of street-level bureaucracy have provided important insights into this relationship in specific situations, they rarely move beyond case study findings toward a more general research approach. Through cross-case analysis of fieldwork from California welfare and welfare-to-work programs, the authors inductively developed a framework for investigating how organizational setting mediates between policy goals and frontline behavior. The authors illustrate the use of this framework for welfare programs and street-level studies more generally using illustrations from their prewelfare reform study as well as from more recent postreform/Temporary Aid to Needy Families studies.