Becoming Bureaucrats: Socialization at the Front Lines of Government Service

Appendix A. Research Design

appendix a Research Design Case Choices To examine the diverging expectations set forth in Chapters 1 and 2, this book outlines the findings from a comparative case study of entering police officers and welfare caseworkers. These two cases were selected because they have much in common but also differ in important ways. This section discusses the similarities and differences between these cases and why they are useful for understanding the process of bureaucratic socialization. Similarities Between the Cases Police officers and welfare caseworkers belong to the class of street-level bureaucrats—workers who have some discretion and interact face-to-face with the public (Lipsky 1980). Though they operate in different settings, they share much in common and have been referred to as the “archetypical” and “paradigmatic” street-level bureaucrats (Brehm and Gates 1997; Maynard-Moody and Portillo 2010). Both groups must process a large number of people on a regular basis (Hasenfeld 1972; Lipsky 1980; Prottas 1979). As they do their work, they assess and classify situations and people (Rubinstein 1973; Sandfort, Kalil, and Gottschalk 1999). This means both groups are charged with transforming messy human situations into neat “cases.” This is a burden, but it is also a source of power: by deciding who goes into which categories these workers can affect people ’s material well-being, freedom, and social statuses. Processing and assessing people, prior studies suggest, pushes street-level bureaucrats toward skepticism: they are concerned with arriving at an accurate assessment of people’s situations 180 Appendix A (getting “the real story”) and, as a result, tend to bring a cynical or critical eye to interactions with the public (Sandfort, Kalil, and Gottschalk 1999; TwerskyGlasner 2005; Van Maanen 1974). Another way that these bureaucrats are similar is that they both operate in highly formalized, “rule-saturated” environments (Maynard-Moody and Musheno 2003). Both have thick guidebooks filled with policies that are meant to guide their every action. Although rule saturation may provide workers with some amount of guidance, it is also presents a problem: the guidebooks are voluminous, constantly being updated, and, sometimes, contradictory. As a result, it is difficult for police and welfare caseworkers to know all the relevant policies and to keep up with changes. When two policies contradict, they must determine how to proceed . Therefore, although they operate in highly formalized environments, these workers are not necessarily “rule bound.” Rather, rule saturation may actually enhance their power: since they cannot know everything, they, to some extent, pick and choose which rules to follow. This is not to suggest that these are rogue operators who are contemptuous of the rules. Rather, the rules are part constraint and part resource. Police officers and welfare caseworkers are also similar cases because both sets of workers operate in organizations that have, to at least some extent, joined the performance management revolution (Moynihan 2008). Using this approach to management, organizations collect real-time information and monitor the actions of organization members. Managers then use this information to make relevant organizational decisions. In theory this type of management is supposed to lead to more effective public organizations. However, as critics have noted (Radin 2000; Soss, Fording, and Schram 2011b), in practice performance management can lead to perverse incentives and a distortion of how public organizations function . Though these two cases are linked in that both have adopted performance management, it is important to comment on how each has been implemented to illustrate their comparability. Police officers have traditionally operated outside the view of superiors (D. Smith and Visher 1981). As part of the performance management movement, in recent years departments have adopted Compstat programs in an effort to track real-time crime developments and more effectively monitor officers (D. Smith and Bratton 2001). In particular, many departments have installed cameras in police vehicles to document automobile stops and use computers to document and track police behavior. Although this may reduce officer discretion in some ways, many interactions with civilians occur off camera in nonautomotive interactions. Also, more important, Compstat programs ultimately depend on the paperwork submit- Research Design 181 ted by officers.As a result, though Compstat and technological changes have made it easier to monitor police, officers retain significant power over the information by which they will be judged. Also, the rising demand for police supervisors to monitor officer behavior and crime reporting may counterintuitively diminish their actual knowledge of what is happening on the streets...