Policy Work: Street-Level Organizations Under New Managerialism
Policy Work: Street-Level Organizations Under New Managerialism
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DOI：
10.1093/jopart/muq093
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发表时间：
2011-04-01
影响因子：
4.2
通讯作者：
Brodkin, Evelyn Z.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Brodkin, Evelyn Z.
街头组织是制定公共政策的关键角色。这些组织的重要性反映在新的公共管理战略中，这些战略旨在影响街道一级组织的工作方式，部分方式是通过基于业绩的激励措施“引导”自行酌定的做法。基本的假设是，如果绩效指标提供了相当于底线和激励（或惩罚）附加到他们，人们可以离开它的街道一级的组织，以确定如何最好地做policy work.This文章直接挑战的前提下，如何做政策工作并不重要，只要业绩基准得到满足。它带来了一个街头的角度来承担日益增长的辩论，质疑新的公共管理（NPM）战略的有效性和政治影响。我认为，这些战略是基于，部分，对如何街道一级的自由裁量权与绩效激励相互作用，以及这些战略如何涉及到政策的政治有缺陷的假设。我阐述了一个分析框架来理解街道-新管理主义下的选择与约束的层次逻辑，并以福利改革为例，考察新管理主义与自由裁量权在日常生活中是如何相互作用的一家大型城市福利机构的负责人分析表明，街道一级的从业者不只是响应绩效激励，他们用自己的自由裁量权来调整他们，生产非正式的做法，是实质性的不同，更多样化的决策者或管理人员往往认识到。一个街道层面的观点阐明了福利改革表面上的“成功”的维度，而绩效指标没有捕捉到，可以说掩盖了它们表面上旨在提供的透明度。更好地了解街道一级的组织如何做政策工作，揭示了NPM的局限性，并提供了一个基础，开发替代它。
Street-level organizations are pivotal players in the making of public policy. The importance of these organizations is reflected in new public management strategies that aim to influence how street-level organizations work, in part, by "steering" discretionary practices through performance-based incentives. The underlying assumptions are that if performance indicators provide the equivalent of a bottom line and incentives (or penalties) are attached to them, one can leave it to street-level organizations to determine how best to do policy work.This article directly challenges the premise that how policy work is done does not matter so long as performance benchmarks are met. It brings a street-level perspective to bear on a growing debate that questions both the effectiveness and the political implications of new public management (NPM) strategies. I argue that these strategies are based, in part, on flawed assumptions about how street-level discretion interacts with performance incentives and how these strategies relate to policy politics.In this article, I elaborate an analytic framework for understanding the street-level logic of choice and constraint under new managerialism and then turn to the case of welfare reform to examine how new managerialism and discretion interacted in the everyday life of a major urban welfare agency. The analysis reveals that street-level practitioners do not just respond to performance incentives; they use their discretion to adjust to them, producing informal practices that are substantively different from-and more diverse than-what policymakers or managers tend to recognize. A street-level view illuminates dimensions of welfare reform's apparent "success" that performance metrics do not capture, arguably obscuring the very transparency they are ostensibly designed to provide. A better understanding of how street-level organizations do policy work reveals NPM's limitations and provides a foundation for developing alternatives to it.