Governing Street-Level Bureaucracies

The Organizational Shaping of Caseworkers
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-33194-2
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 178 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Reihe: Routledge Studies in the Sociology of Work, Professions and Organisations

This book examines how caseworkers are governed in today’s street-level bureaucracies. It redefines our understanding of public sector governance by highlighting the subtle, informal, and everyday forms of organizational governance that shape caseworkers’ subjectivities beyond formal policies and professional identities. Based on four distinct types of normative governance – ‘governance by discourse’, ‘governance by emotions’, ‘governance by peers’, and ‘governance by numbers, colours, and symbols’, the book shows how caseworkers are shaped as organizational staff members alongside their roles as welfare professionals and welfare state bureaucrats. 

Governing Street-level Bureaucracies will be of interest to scholars and students in organizational sociology, street-level bureaucracy research, public administration, and critical management studies. It also provides valuable insights for policymakers and practitioners seeking to understand caseworkers’ responses to public governance and public sector reforms.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Johansson, Hakan

Jacobsson, Kerstin

Johansson, Håkan

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction: Governing Street-level Bureaucracies  2. Normative Governance in Street-level Bureaucracies  3. The Organizational Context  4. Governance by Discourse  5. Governance by Emotion  6. Governance by Peers  7. Governance by Numbers, Colours and Symbols  8. Caseworker Subjectivities and Responses to Governance  9. Conclusion

Über Autor(innen)

Kerstin Jacobsson is Professor of sociology at the Department of Sociology and Work Science at University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She has published extensively on discourse and governance in the field of social and labour market policy, as well as on street-level bureaucracy.

Håkan Johansson is a Professor of social work at the School of Social Work at Lund University, Sweden. He has published extensively on topics related to comparative social policy and activation reforms, and their implementation in Nordic welfare states.