Toward a General Analytic Framework

Abstract

The way frontline workers in human service organizations implement policy is greatly influenced by how their jobs are structured within particular organizational settings. Although scholars of street-level bureaucracy have provided important insights into this relationship in specific situations, they rarely move beyond case study findings toward a more general research approach. Through cross-case analysis of fieldwork from California welfare and welfare-to-work programs, the authors inductively developed a framework for investigating how organizational setting mediates between policy goals and frontline behavior. The authors illustrate the use of this framework for welfare programs and street-level studies more generally using illustrations from their prewelfare reform study as well as from more recent postreform/Temporary Aid to Needy Families studies.