TY - JOUR
T1 - Revisiting Lipsky
T2 - Front-Line Work in UK Local Governance
AU - Durose, C.
N1 - Copyright 2011 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2011/12/1
Y1 - 2011/12/1
N2 - Lipsky's work on 'street-level bureaucracy' drew attention to the significant contribution to policy making made by front-line workers. This article revisits Lipsky's seminal analysis to explore whether contemporary front-line work in local governance presents a challenge to the 'street-level bureaucrat' characterisation. Since Lipsky's analysis, local government has been the subject of extensive reforms which have eroded traditional structures. In order to make local governance work, front-line workers need to be entrepreneurial to innovate and work the emergent spaces of local governance. This research uses an interpretive analysis to explore how front-line workers understand and relate their everyday work through storytelling. Front-line workers articulate a series of strategies which they employ to enable them to build relationships with the community. The article concludes that the emergent spaces at the periphery of local governance require front-line work that is less like 'street-level bureaucracy' and more like 'civic entrepreneurship'.
AB - Lipsky's work on 'street-level bureaucracy' drew attention to the significant contribution to policy making made by front-line workers. This article revisits Lipsky's seminal analysis to explore whether contemporary front-line work in local governance presents a challenge to the 'street-level bureaucrat' characterisation. Since Lipsky's analysis, local government has been the subject of extensive reforms which have eroded traditional structures. In order to make local governance work, front-line workers need to be entrepreneurial to innovate and work the emergent spaces of local governance. This research uses an interpretive analysis to explore how front-line workers understand and relate their everyday work through storytelling. Front-line workers articulate a series of strategies which they employ to enable them to build relationships with the community. The article concludes that the emergent spaces at the periphery of local governance require front-line work that is less like 'street-level bureaucracy' and more like 'civic entrepreneurship'.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?partnerID=yv4JPVwI&eid=2-s2.0-80755132184&md5=a646b8973e67bfddbcd8ee095eaff65d
U2 - 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00886.x
DO - 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00886.x
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:80755132184
SN - 0032-3217
VL - 59
SP - 978
EP - 995
JO - Political Studies
JF - Political Studies
IS - 4
ER -