Double Standards in Frontline Decision Making: A Theoretical and Empirical Exploration

• Author: Nadine Raaphorst,Sandra Groeneveld
• Date: 01 September 2018
• DOI: 10.1177/0095399718760587
• Published date: 01 September 2018
• Subject Matter: Articles

760587AASXXX10.1177/0095399718760587Administration & SocietyRaaphorst and Groeneveld
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Administration & Society
2018, Vol. 50(8) 1175 –1201
Double Standards in
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Making: A Theoretical
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and Empirical
Exploration
Nadine Raaphorst1 and Sandra Groeneveld1
Abstract
Drawing on status characteristics and double standards theory, this study
explores how social categories may affect the standards tax officials use in
evaluating citizen-clients’ trustworthiness, leading to differential evaluation.
Whereas the street-level bureaucracy literature mainly focuses on the
direct effect of social categories on officials’ judgments, this study shows
how stereotyping in the public encounter could be much subtler and more
pervasive than is hitherto studied. Based on semistructured interviews
containing 40 stories of tax officials who inspect entrepreneurs’ tax returns,
this study suggests that similar signals may indeed be interpreted differently
for different social groups.
Keywords
status characteristics theory, double standards theory, public encounter,
street-level decision making, stereotyping, discretion
1Leiden University, Den Haag, The Netherlands
Corresponding Author:
Nadine Raaphorst, Institute of Public Administration, Faculty of Governance and Global
Affairs, Leiden University, Turfmarkt 99, 2511 DP Den Haag, The Netherlands.
Email: n.j.raaphorst@fgga.leidenuniv.nl

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Introduction
The decision of “who gets what and how” is not only made by public officials
who are formally endowed with the task to formulate policies, but is also
made by the officials at the frontlines of interaction between the state and citi-
zens (Hupe & Hill, 2007; Lipsky, 1980; Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2000,
2003). Whereas street-level workers have the least formal authority, they
have discretion to apply laws, rules, and procedures to specific cases. They
have discretion “because the nature of provision calls for human judgment
that cannot be programmed and for which machines cannot substitute”
(Lipsky, 1980, p. 161). Hence, it is held that street-level bureaucrats’ decision
making is partly dependent on the relationship they have with citizens, guided
by their own cultural beliefs about what is fair and normal (Harrits & Møller,
2014; Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2000, 2003).
Whereas “routine cases” facing public organizations are nowadays treated
in a standardized way, and handled by automatic computer systems (e.g.,
Bovens & Zouridis, 2002), the difficult cases cannot be preprogrammed and
call for human judgment. In fact, horizontal steering models within public
organizations, promoting notions as trust and commitment between frontline
officials and citizens (e.g., Peters, 2004; Stivers, 1994; Yang, 2005), even
encourage frontline officials’ own judgment. Within such governance mod-
els, discretion is seen not only as necessary but also as essential in enabling
officials to pursue compliance, responsiveness, and trust (Bartels, 2013).
Trust, as a reciprocal notion, shifts the attention from predetermined rules
and procedures to aspects of the interaction (Stivers, 1994; Yang, 2005). As
such, a tension exists between the organization and the individual street-level
bureaucrat; the former encouraging consistency using digital systems and
managerial control, the latter opposing this control in the need to be respon-
sive to specific cases (Rutz, Mathew, Robben, & De Bont, 2017). This
increased street-level discretion thus constitutes a source of uncertainty not
only for managers and citizens but also for street-level officials who experi-
ence ambiguities and dilemmas in discretionary decision making (Raaphorst,
2018). The question, then, is how frontline officials working with this leeway
come to evaluate citizen-clients as trustworthy or untrustworthy.
As street-level workers only have little time and information, it has been
argued that they look for certain cues or signals to categorize citizen-clients
(Mennerick, 1974). Whereas some signals are predetermined by the organi-
zation for which an official works, other signals bureaucrats look for are
indeterminate and dependent on the interaction with the client. It is held that
in uncertain situations social typologies offer bureaucrats strategic informa-
tion that they would otherwise not have (Mennerick, 1974). These social
typologies “allow both service workers and clients to fill in the gap between

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merely knowing the other’s formal status and being acquainted intimately
with him” (Mennerick, 1974, pp. 398-399). The street-level bureaucracy lit-
erature commonly focuses on how certain characteristics of citizen-clients,
such as their attitude, behavior, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status, directly
affects officials’ categorization judgment (e.g., Harrits & Møller, 2014;
Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003). As such, these attributes serve as direct
shortcuts to citizen-clients’ supposed identities.
However, sociological research on hiring decisions of employers relying on
the sociological status characteristics theory (Foschi, 2000; Ridgeway, 1991)
shows how social typologies not only serve as shortcuts to unobserved charac-
teristics but also as “lenses” through which other attributes of the person are
assessed. This means that social typologies could not only directly influence
officials’ categorization judgment, but also indirectly by unequally influencing
the interpretation of other signals relevant for the judgment at hand. How social
typologies affect the interpretation of other signals or cues and, hence, affect
bureaucrats’ categorization judgment is however an underexplored theme
within research on public encounters. Such a study is important as it would give
insight in how broader cultural beliefs find their way in official–citizen interac-
tions and affect frontline decision making. Stereotypes that serve as lenses,
moreover, are more pervasive than stereotypes that serve as shortcuts as the
former involve stereotypical interpretations of a broader set of aspects.
This study focuses on frontline inspectors working for the Dutch tax
authorities who over the years have been encouraged by new models of gov-
ernance and management to make their own judgment regarding a client’s
trustworthiness and include this judgment in their decision making.
Enforcement of tax laws at the frontline, thus, has become much less clear-
cut and predetermined. This article offers a first exploration of the theoretical
mechanisms stemming from the double standards theory in a frontline con-
text. Its aim is to explore how expectations associated with group character-
istics may lead to a differential evaluation of similar situations. By analyzing
11 semistructured interviews with tax officials who inspect the acceptability
of entrepreneurs’ tax returns, this study answers the following research
question:
Research Question: How may citizen-clients’ belonging to social groups
affect officials’ interpretation of signals?
To examine this, this study first explores more broadly what signals tax
officials look at to evaluate citizen-clients’ trustworthiness,1 and how offi-
cials come to interpret certain attributes as signals. For this reason, the first
part of the reported findings is more inductive, which allows us to examine
what kind of social typologies are used to assess trustworthiness. The second

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part is more focused and explores how similar signals may be evaluated dif-
ferently depending on entrepreneurs’ supposed belonging to a social group.
In what follows, we will discuss two streams of literature that have a dif-
ferent (but not mutually exclusive) take on the role of social typologies in
categorization judgments. The first and predominant view in the street-level
bureaucracy literature perceives of social typologies as shortcuts to people’s
supposed identities. The second stream of literature, aligning with the socio-
logical status characteristics theory (Ridgeway, 1991, 2014), studies how
social typologies work as interpretive frameworks, also affecting the inter-
pretation of other attributes. After discussing these theories and the specific
expectations arising from this, we will discuss our methods and present our
findings. In the last section, we will discuss our findings and offer recom-
mendations for future research.
Signaling Theory: Social Typologies as Shortcuts
Street-level bureaucracy scholars commonly acknowledge official–citizen
interactions are pervaded by a deep uncertainty (Maynard-Moody & Musheno,
2003; Wagenaar, 2004). Research shows that bureaucrats are “aware of how
little they ‘really know’ about their subjects” (Kravel-Tovi, 2012, p. 382).
When street-level workers need to make quick judgments, they tend to rein-
force stereotyped or stigmatized identities (Andersen & Guul, 2016; Lipsky,
1980; Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003). Studies pointing to the role of
stereotypes or shortcuts in officials’ categorization judgments (e.g., Gambetta
& Hamill, 2005; Harrits & Møller, 2014; Lipsky, 1980; Maynard-Moody &
Musheno, 2003; Prottas, 1979) implicitly build upon the idea that officials
face an information gap that is reduced by looking for observable characteris-
tics. In...