Case Study: Dilemmas Of The Individual In Public Services

Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services, 30th Anniversary Expanded Edition
MICHAEL LIPSKY
Winner of the 1980 C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems
Winner of the 1981 Gladys M. Kammerer Award from the American Political Science Association
Winner of the 1999 Aaron Wildavsky Enduring Contribution Award from the Policy Studies Organization
First published in 1980, Street-Level Bureaucracy received critical acclaim for its insightful study of how public service workers, in effect, function as policy decision makers, as they wield their considerable discretion in the day-to-day implementation of public programs. Three decades later, the need to bolster the availability and effectiveness of healthcare,
Lipsky maintains, however, that these problems are not insurmountable. Over the years, public managers have developed ways to bring street-level performance more in line with agency goals. This expanded edition of Street-Level Bureaucracy underscores that, despite its challenging nature, street-level work can be made to conform to higher expectations of public service.
MICHAEL LIPSKY is senior program director of Demos, a non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization, and an affiliate professor at Georgetown University.
Video: CUNY graduate center panel discussion on the 30th anniversary of the publication of Street-Level Bureaucracy. Participants are Michael Lipsky, Distinguished Senior fellow at Demos and Research Professor at Georgetown University; John Mollenkopf, Director of the Center for Urban Research at CUNY Graduate Center; Linda Gibbs, Deputy Mayor for Human Services of the City of New York; and Ellen Schall, Dean of the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at NYU. Introduction by RSF President Eric
The topic is explored through a critical analysis of Lipsky 's examination of discretion within street-level bureaucracies. The thesis first outlines Lipsky 's analysis of discretion and subsequent research within the street-level bureaucracy perspective, identify the limited analysis of the role of managers and the influence of professionalism on discretion as areas for further consideration. The thesis explores debates about management control and professionalism with regards to social workers ' discretion, and how these relate to the continuing relevance of Lipsky 's work on discretion. Two key alternative accounts of discretion in contemporary social work are identified: domination managerialism, arguing that managers have achieved control over social work and have extinguished discretion; and the discursive managerialism perspective, which sees managerial control and professional discretion intersecting in different ways in different settings. The thesis examines these arguments in terms of their descriptions of different regimes of discretion, that is: how discretion is characterised; claims about the nature of management control; and the role of professional status. These issues are examined through a study of an older persons team and a mental health team within the same local authority. The study suggests that 'management ' is not monolithic, but is an internally