Abstract
If we want to understand how bureaucrats behave, we need to reckon with whom they are and how they are influenced by the social forces that they encounter in their workplaces. As such, this chapter asks how newcomers are shaped by the organizations that they enter and what this means for how they use their discretion. To guide this pursuit, the chapter uses the Logic of Appropriateness, a decision-making theory, next to two competing explanatory frameworks for organizational socialization, the dispositional and institutional perspectives. Using these perspectives as a guide, the chapter discusses the findings from a research project that examined how two sets of entering street-level bureaucrats—police officers and welfare caseworkers—developed their approaches to discretion during their first few years on the job.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The by-the-book question to police officers was slightly different; before ‘It’s important […]’ it said ‘As a police officer.’
References
Ajzen, I. (2001). Nature and operation of attitudes. Annual Review of Psychology, 52(1), 27–58.
Barnett, M. (2003). Eyewitness to a genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Brehm, J. & Gates, S. (1997). Working, shirking, and sabotage: Bureaucratic response to a democratic public. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Costa, P. & McCrae, R. (1994). Set like plaster? Evidence for the stability of adult personality. In T. Heatherton & J. Weinberger (Eds) Can personality change? (pp. 21–40). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Dolan, J. (2000. The senior executive service: Gender, attitudes, and representative bureaucracy. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 10(3), 513–529.
Ellwanger, S. (2010). How police officers learn ethics. In M. Braswell, B. McCarthy & B. McCarthy (Eds), Justice, crime and ethics (pp. 45–70). New York: Elsevier.
Etzioni, A. (1969). Preface. In A. Etzioni (Ed.), The semi-professions and their organization: Teachers, nurses, social workers (pp. v–xvii). New York: Free Press.
Hafferty, F. (1998). Beyond curriculum reform: Confronting medicine’s hidden curriculum. Academic Medicine, 73(4), 403–407.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Macmillan.
le Grand, J. (2003). Motivation, agency, and public policy: Of knights and knaves, pawns and queens. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lipsky, M. (1980). Street-level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public service. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Lurie, I. (2006). At the front lines of the welfare system: A perspective on the decline in welfare caseloads. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
March, J. (1994). A primer on decision making: How decisions happen. New York: Free Press.
March, J. & Olsen, J. (2006). The logic of appropriateness. In M. Moran, M. Rein & R. Goodin (Eds), The Oxford Handbook of public policy (pp. 689–708). New York: Oxford University Press.
———. (2009). The logic of appropriateness. ARENA: Centre for European Studies.
Maynard-Moody, S. & Musheno, M. (2003). Cops, teachers, counselors: Stories from the front lines of public service. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Oberfield, Z. (2014). Becoming bureaucrats: Socialization at the front lines of government service. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
O’Reilly, C., Chatman, J. & Caldwell, D. (1991). People and organizational culture: A profile comparison approach to assessing person-organization fit. The Academy of Management Journal, 34(3), 487–516.
Perry, J. (1997). Antecedents of public service motivation. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 7(2), 181–197.
Perry, J. & Hondeghem, A. (2008). Editors’ introduction. In J. Perry & A. Hondeghem (Eds), Motivation in public management: The call of public service (pp. 1–14). New York: Oxford University Press.
Perry, J. & Wise, L. (1990). The motivational bases of public service. Public Administration Review, 50(3), 367–373.
Portillo, S. & DeHart-Davis, L. (2009). Gender and organizational rule abidance. Public Administration Review, 69(2), 339–347.
Prottas, J. (1979). People-processing: The street-level bureaucrat in public service bureaucracies. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
Rubinstein, J. (1973). City police. New York: Hill and Wang.
Saks, A. & Ashforth, B. (1997). Organizational socialization: Making sense of the past and present as a prologue for the future. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 51(2), 234–279.
Sandfort, J. (2000). Moving beyond discretion and outcomes: Examining public management from the front lines of the welfare system. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 10(4), 729–756.
Schneider, B. (1987). The people make the place. Personnel Psychology, 40(3), 437–453.
Simon, H. 1997. Administrative behavior: A study of decision-making processes in administrative organizations. New York: Free Press.
Thaler, R. & Sunstein, C. (2008). Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. New York: Penguin.
van Kleef, D. (2016). Changing the nature of the beast: How organizational socialization contributes to the development of the organizational role identity of Dutch veterinary inspectors. Doctoral thesis, Leiden University.
Van Maanen, J. (1974). Working the street: A developmental view of police behavior. In H. Jacob (Ed.), The potential for reform of criminal justice (pp. 83–130). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Wanous, J. (1992). Organizational entry: Recruitment, selection, and socialization of newcomers. Reading, PA: Addison-Wesley.
Watkins-Hayes, C. (2009). The new welfare bureaucrats: Entanglements of race, class, and policy reform. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Weber, M. (1947). The theory of social and economic organization (T. Parsons, Trans.). New York: Free Press.
Wilkins, V. & Williams, B. (2008). Black or blue: Racial profiling and representative bureaucracy. Public Administration Review, 68(4), 654–664.
Wilson, J. (1989). Bureaucracy: What government agencies do and why they do it. New York: Basic Books.
Yin, R. (2003). Case study research: Design and methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Yoon, K. & Hwang, C. (1995). Multiple attribute decision making: An introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Oberfield, Z.W. (2020). Discretion from a Sociological Perspective. In: Evans, T., Hupe, P. (eds) Discretion and the Quest for Controlled Freedom. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19566-3_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19566-3_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-19565-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-19566-3
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)