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The purpose of this paper is to examine the attitudes of street-level bureaucrats from different agencies and sectors of the Finnish welfare state, namely municipal social workers, diaconal workers of the Lutheran church, benefit officials of the Social Security Institution and officials of private unemployment funds.

The authors are interested in the following questions: What are the attitudes of street-level bureaucrats towards the labour market allowance? What is the impact of individual characteristics? The study utilised the unique national survey data of different groups of street-level bureaucrats from the year 2011 (total N=2,313). The dependent variables focus on legitimacy of the basic level of labour market allowance and sanction policies. Analyses are built around five independent variables which measure professional, personal interest and ideological factors.

There are differences both between and within groups of Finnish street-level bureaucrats with regard to their attitudes concerning the labour market allowance. Social and diaconal workers believe more often than officials that the level of labour market allowance is too low, and offer less support for the idea that an unemployed person should take any job that is offered or have their unemployment security reduced. The results show that the attitudes of bureaucrats are explained by length of work history, economic situation and ideological factors.

There have been very few analyses comparing attitudes among different groups of bureaucrats. The present study is intended to fill this gap in the literature.

The purpose of this article’s research was threefold. Firstly, it aimed to investigate how social services professionals coped during the pandemic period by comparing their involvement in five different national contexts. Secondly, it analysed how these professionals have performed their duties according to the street-level bureaucracy theory. Finally, the third question examines social workers' strategies to guide their professional role when they may have had more discretion in their actions. The research also examined whether discretion has increased during this phase and, if so, how it has been exercised.

This article is based on the findings of the project called “Theory and Practice of Social Work in the World in Times of Pandemic”, which was funded by the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW). The project involved 11 universities across five countries in Europe and Latin America, including Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Spain and Sweden. The research was conducted over 24 months to analyse the practices and measures taken to protect vulnerable people by adapting social services during the extraordinary period of the pandemic. In addition, the research explored how the awareness of emergency arose among social workers and how it influenced the services delivered from the perspective of the street-level bureaucracy theory. In different countries, the level of resourcefulness of services has varied based on their recognition of the severity of the pandemic and the impact of the government’s narratives. In some cases, these narratives have been conspiratorial or even anti-scientific. Additionally, there has been a reduction in the distance between professionals and clients, increased inequalities in access to services and a positive reassessment of the potential of new professional tools, such as digital social work, in establishing a trusting relationship.

As revealed in the interviews, the elements shaping this high degree of discretion among social workers can be classified into three levels: macro- and micro- (Saruis, 2015) plus a meso-level. Each level has four significant aspects. At the macro-level, these are legislation, public information, large associationism and integration of the social services-health system. At the meso-level, these are interpretations of role performance by managers technical equipment, self-organization and community action. The micro-level pertains to personal and family situations, emotions, ethics and social workers' direct relationships with those in charge.

This study investigated how social workers responded to the Covid-19 pandemic. The data gathered sheds light on their understanding of the situation, as well as the differences in experiences across the five countries studied. However, it is essential to note that the findings may not apply to all situations or countries. Nevertheless, this research serves as a stepping stone for future studies to delve deeper into the results and explore them in greater detail .

The study highlights the crucial role of social workers as street-level workers in managing, negotiating and creating meaning in the interaction between professionals and the people they serve. This is especially relevant in Latin America. Additionally, the study emphasizes the significance of social workers as policy actors and the political nature of social work practice. The findings also underscore the importance of effective communication and collaboration between social workers, their teams and the organizations they work for. The sources cited in the study are Barberis and Boccagni (2014) and Cuadra and Staaf (2014). The research has also underscored the potential of social service workers to build networks and cooperate. Such networking can play a vital role in implementing their acquired knowledge. The study has, therefore, emphasized the importance of social workers being an integral part of the societies they serve. They need to continuously enhance their communication skills, using all the necessary tools to gain a comprehensive and updated understanding of the evolving needs of their clients. Integrating digital social work as a mode of service provision has emerged as a crucial aspect, especially in the three European countries observed. This approach has demonstrated its potential and is expected to continue being a part of services to some extent, even after the return to normalcy. However, it is essential to ensure that the accessibility and proximity of services are not compromised in any way.

An unexpected result was observed during the research: the pandemic circumstances have led to valuable reflections. These reflections can help in rethinking and recreating social services. Social workers have been given a unique opportunity to return to the essence of their profession and develop less bureaucratic and more humane ways of working. This experience has also enabled them to recover a closer relationship with the people they serve. To sum up, this study emphasizes that social workers, when given more leeway in their work, rely on cultivating and upholding relationships with other professionals, organizations and stakeholders to stay connected with the community they serve. This is crucial for ensuring the delivery of effective and sustainable social services.

The research employed a thematic analysis approach (Bazeley, 2007) to identify themes related to the concept of consciousness as derived from the field experiences of social workers. Additionally, an in-case and cross-case analysis method (Fereday and Muir-Cochrane, 2006) was used to connect themes related to individual experiences with those gathered from the overall experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and problematizes one of the oft-cited reasons why the implementation of public policy and other development initiatives goes wrong – namely that there is a mismatch or antagonistic relationship between street-level worker’s decisions and priorities on the one hand and on the other hand the policy-makers’ or administrators’ directives and priorities.

The paper builds on seven months of ethnographic fieldwork set in a Danish municipal unit which administered the sickness benefit legislation.

Through the reading of an ethnographic example of implementation of labour market policy this paper suggests that when policy invariably is distorted at the administrative level it is not necessarily due to lack of will among street-level workers to comply with legislation or centrally devised directives but rather because: in practice, planning and implementation are concurrent processes that continuously feed into each other; and that the concerns and the “local knowledge and practice” that guide planning-implementation do not belong to individual people but are dynamic perspectives that individual people might take up in certain situations.

This challenges conventional descriptions of street-level workers as a distinct group of people with distinctive concerns and attitudes to their work. The paper suggests instead the metaphor “vector of concern” to capture the way street-level workers’ changes of perspectives might cause interventions to disintegrate and evolve in potentially conflicting directions.

Health service effectiveness continues to be limited by misaligned objectives between policy makers and frontline clinicians. While capturing the discretion workers inevitably exercise, the concept of “street-level bureaucracy” has tended to artificially separate policy makers and workers. The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of social-organizational context in aligning policy with practice.

This mixed-method participatory study focuses on a locally developed tool to implement an Australia-wide strategy to engage and respond to mental health services for parents with mental illness. Researchers: completed 69 client file audits; administered 64 staff surveys; conducted 24 interviews and focus groups (64 participants) with staff and a consumer representative; and observed eight staff meetings, in an acute and sub-acute mental health unit. Data were analyzed using content analysis, thematic analysis and descriptive statistics.

Based on successes and shortcomings of the implementation (assessment completed for only 30 percent of clients), a model of integration is presented, distinguishing “assimilist” from “externalist” positions. These depend on the degree to which, and how, the work environment affords clinicians the setting to coordinate efforts to take account of clients’ personal and social needs. This was particularly so for allied health clinicians and nurses undertaking sub-acute rehabilitative-transitional work.

A new conceptualization of street-level bureaucracy is offered. Rather than as disconnected, it is a process of mutual influence among interdependent actors. This positioning can serve as a framework to evaluate how and under what circumstances discretion is appropriate, and to be supported by managers and policy makers to optimize client-defined needs.

This article suggests that leadership does not just occur in the higher echelons of a bureaucratic hierarchy, but is endemic throughout the organization and is present even at the basic rank and file level. Street-level leaders emerge when the need arises for quick decisions and responses to complex stimuli. These relatively "informal" leaders can exert a significant influence on how and what things get done. Many of these decisions involve transactional decisions between leaders and followers. However, to deal with more complex challenges, street-level leaders may need to incorporate transformational leadership strategies, similar to leaders higher in the hierarchy. To test this thesis this article reports the survey findings of a study of state agency of disabilities and their contractor provider organizations.

Seeks to examine how far Michael Lipsky's theory of discretion as it relates to public sector professionals as “street‐level bureaucrats” is still applicable in the light of public sector reform and in particular the introduction of increased managerial control over professionals.

The main thesis in Lipsky's work, Street‐Level Bureaucracy, that street‐level bureaucrats devise their own rules and procedures to deal with the dilemmas of policy implementation is linked to public sector reform over the past 25 years or so. The article differentiates between three forms of discretion, rule, task and value and assesses the extent to which these different forms of discretion have been compromised by reform. Examples are drawn principally from the literature on school teachers and social workers

The findings suggest that the rule‐making (hence bureaucratic) capacity of professionals at street‐level is much less influential than before although it is questionable whether or not the greater accountability of professionals to management and clarity of the targets and objectives of organisations delivering public policy has liberated them from the dilemmas of street‐level bureaucracy.

The work has focussed on the UK and in particular on two professions. However, it may be applied to any country which has undergone public sector reform and in particular where “new public management” processes and procedures have been implemented. There is scope for in‐depth studies of a range of occupations, professional and otherwise in the UK and elsewhere.

Policy makers and managers should consider how far the positive aspects of facilitating discretion in the workplace by reducing the need for “rule‐making” to cope with dilemmas have been outweighed by increased levels of bureaucracy and the “de‐skilling” of professionals.

Lipsky's much cited and influential work is evaluated in the light of public sector reform some 25 years since it was published. The three forms of discretion identified offer the scope for their systematic application to the workplace.

This study aims to identify the street-level approaches of professional workers in complex public social service organisations when attending to social assistance claimants.

The study employed a multifaceted approach comprising documentary analysis, semi-structured individual interviews (17) and focus group discussions (8) with qualified frontline social workers from primary care social services in Tarragona.

Social workers embodied three specific sets of cognitive, normative and emotional dispositions when attending to people with low incomes. First, the compassionate approach conceives clients as defensive regarding social services and emotionally vulnerable because of deprivation. Second, the instructional approach frames clients as being baffled by a new, precarious, institutional and economic context. They also lack information, abilities and the proper mindset to conceive of and attain available welfare and occupational resources. Third, the enforcement approach tends to define clients as suspicious, trying to obtain an excessive and unfair advantage of the welfare system that would eventually hamper their social opportunities.

Research thus far has tended to define public social assistance programmes in Southern welfare state contexts as mostly inefficient and hardly relevant residual social policies. The street-level approach shows that social workers try to resist the mere administrative processing of benefits, which is a professionally troubling and organisationally unsustainable way to proceed. They attempt to help clients by providing inclusive content in order to implement their benefits.

Regulations to promote sanity in microfinance institutions and improve their operational problems yielded some results but lacked equal voice for effective implementation for its full realization. Much therefore has not changed in sub-Sahara African countries, though various types of regulation for microfinance exist. The nature and implementation of such policies therefore matter more than their mere presence. This paper aims to evaluate the nature of microfinance financial policies, given their social nature and the dynamism of their operational environment, and explores factors mitigating effective implementation of microfinance policy in Ghana.

A structured questionnaire was used to obtain data from the management and other officials of 63 microfinance institutions, and the outcome was organized into graphs and tables for descriptive analysis.

The results identified adequate adapted prudential regulation for microfinance institutions, but the formulation process lacked user input and adequate supervision, hindering effective sector policy implementation. The author therefore recommends a more inclusive and participatory policy formulation approach, creation of information platform for complete microfinance data through semi-autonomous supervisory body for microfinance services and regular full stakeholder engagement.

Though the study is limited to tier-two microfinance institutions in Accra, it is evident that the results can be applied to the entire sector and across national borders because microfinance institutions exhibit similar or same characteristics.

This paper has not been submitted to or published by any other journal. The author certifies that the content of this paper is the product of his own work, and that other sources used in preparing this paper and their respective sources have been duly acknowledged.

The study compares the social services functioning in two local contexts, one urban and one rural, in the same Italian region, to understand how contextual features affect frontline workers' work.

By applying the framework of the street-level bureaucracy theory (SLB) and proposing a framing of the spatial contexts under analysis, the present study adopts a qualitative approach. In particular, semi-structured interviews were conducted among street-level workers, decision-makers and privileged witnesses.

The study shows how the typical features of the rural and urban Italian contexts analyzed impact differently on the working conditions of frontline workers, leading to substantive differences in the possibility of exercise their role at the street-level.

The article contributes to a wider understanding of social services provision in a highly fragmented system like the Italian one by taking into consideration contexts that are usually little investigated in SLB and welfare studies in the Mediterranean Europe area: those rural and, in particular, those belonging to the so-called “inner areas”.

This study aims to investigate the role of relational asymmetries in influencing the coping strategies adopted by frontline workers to deal with the policy–client role conflict.

A comparative analysis of three different services highlights the role of the service relationships characteristics in explaining similarities and differences in the strategies adopted by street-level bureaucrats (SLBs). The research is based on the secondary analysis of three case studies conducted in Italy: the reception system for homeless people, the job brokerage service in the public employment service and the dispute settlement procedure in the labour inspectorate.

The results underline the interaction between the characteristics of the service relationship and the different coping strategies adopted to deal with the policy–client conflict.

The contribution of this study is threefold. Firstly, the authors focus on the influence of the characteristics of the service relationship in terms of agency resources over SLBs’ strategies to face with users’ expectations. Secondly, the authors intend to discuss these issues analysing SLBs not only as agents with individual preferences. Thirdly, the research design allows the authors to return to the street-level bureaucracy theory its comparative essence, proposing a comparative strategy with an explorative intent.