Understanding Street-Level Bureaucrats' Decision Making: Determining Eligibility in the Social Security Disability Program

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Keiser, Lael R.
• 署名单位: University of Missouri System; University of Missouri Columbia; University of Missouri System; University of Missouri Columbia
• 刊物名称: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-3352
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6210.2010.02131.x
• 发表日期: 2010
• 页码: 247-257
• 关键词: goal ambiguity; DISCRETION; responsiveness; INFORMATION; POLITICS; Managers; GENDER

摘要

Personal interactions between clients and street-level bureaucrats are significant in explaining why street-level bureaucrats behave as they do. Not all bureaucracies that apply program rules to individuals, however, engage face-to-face with their clientele. As more intake procedures are automated, such one-on-one encounters decrease. The author generates and tests hypotheses about frontline bureaucratic decision making in the Social Security Disability program, by applying bounded rationality theory. The findings show that eligibility decisions by street-level bureaucrats are affected by their adherence to subsets of agency goals and perceptions of others in the governance system. How quickly they make decisions also has an impact. There is no evidence that the way in which bureaucrats evaluate clients explains their decisions when they lack face-to-face contact.