Cities Including Children

Bureaucratic, market or professional control?

a theory on the relation between street-level task characteristics and the feasibility of control mechanisms

Chapter

Street-level bureaucrats do their work in different contexts and these contexts pose different control challenges. This study distinguishes two context variables: complexity and ambiguity. When ambiguity and complexity are simultaneously high, managers face a double control challenge - achieving both the expertise to address high complexity and the alignment to overcome high ambiguity. Traditional control mechanisms, enforcement, incentives or competence control, fall short. Using evidence from a wide cross-section of street-level tasks (42 cases), this study provides support for the claim that the double control challenge in contexts of simultaneously high complexity and high ambiguity is important in street-level bureaucracies and that it is difficult to devise a response. Usually one of the challenges is simply ignored. Where a response to both control challenges is devised simultaneously, tensions occur because some of the mechanisms conflict with each other. We found very few organisations that have found appropriate solutions.

Street-level bureaucrats do their work in different contexts and these contexts pose different control challenges. This study distinguishes two context variables: complexity and ambiguity. When ambiguity and complexity are simultaneously high, managers face a double control challenge - achieving both the expertise to address high complexity and the alignment to overcome high ambiguity. Traditional control mechanisms, enforcement, incentives or competence control, fall short. Using evidence from a wide cross-section of street-level tasks (42 cases), this study provides support for the claim that the double control challenge in contexts of simultaneously high complexity and high ambiguity is important in street-level bureaucracies and that it is difficult to devise a response. Usually one of the challenges is simply ignored. Where a response to both control challenges is devised simultaneously, tensions occur because some of the mechanisms conflict with each other. We found very few organisations that have found appropriate solutions.

Reference Bannink, D., Six, F., & van Wijk, E. (2015). Bureaucratic, market or professional control? a theory on the relation between street-level task characteristics and the feasibility of control mechanisms. In P. Hupe, M. Hill, & A. Buffat (Eds.), Understanding Street-Level Bureaucracy (pp. 205-226). Policy Press. https://doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781447313267.003.0012
1 January 2015

Publication date

Jan 2015

Author(s)

Duco Bannink
Frédérique Six

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