Managing from the Middle: Frontline Supervisors and Perceptions of Their Organizational Power

• Author: Faye S. Taxman,Kimberly R. Kras,Shannon Portillo
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12079
• Published date: 01 July 2017
• Date: 01 July 2017

Managing from the Middle: Frontline Supervisors and

Perceptions of Their Organizational Power

KIMBERLY R. KRAS, SHANNON PORTILLO, and FAYE S. TAXMAN

Frontline supervisors serve in a critical role, maintaining relationships between upper

management and frontline workers; however, we still know relatively little about how

subordinates view their power in relation to their supervisors and how frontline supervisors

understand and exercise their own power. Focusing on street-level workers and frontline

supervisors across a statewide community corrections agency, we explore perceptions,

experiences, and assertions of power in the workplace. Using focus groups with thirty-two street-

level probation and parole officers and focus groups and field observations of seventy-five

frontline supervisors, we find that officers and frontline supervisors have widely differing views

on the power of the frontline supervisory position, some of which are influenced by gender. While

street-level workers align frontline supervisors with policy creators, frontline supervisors view

themselves as disempowered go-betweens. Frontline supervisors compensate for their perceived

lack of power in policymaking and implementation by using micropower strategies to assert their

power. This study extends street-level bureaucrat theory to the role of frontline supervisors, who

in practice are distant from the upper management roles with which they are typically

categorized.

INTRODUCTION

Employee roles in organizations are most often divided into two classes—management

and street-level work—without considering that most organizations have multiple layers

of management and supervision that sit between. Most literature focuses on top execu-

tives as managers and on managers as a holistic group (Morrill 1995; Grimm and Smith

1991; Burawoy 1979). Managers are policy makers, while street-level workers are policy

implementers. Scholars have thoroughly discussed the discretionary nature of both man-

agers and street-level workers, in particular the inherent autonomy and discretion of those

on the front line (Lipsky 1980; for review, see Portillo and Rudes 2014; Maynard-Moody

and Portillo 2010). In his classic work on the topic, Lipsky (1980) argued that street-level

police officers have significant power because they decide when and how to enforce laws.

Although police officers cannot engage with every person they encounter breaking a law,

they do decide with whom to engage, fundamentally shifting how we understand power in

organizations. Policy is not only the written word on the page that is decided by elected

We would like to thank the members of the agency under study for theirongoing participation and engagement

in action research as well as George Mason University students Tori Goldberg, Heather Toronjo, Courtney

Porter, and Catherine Salzinger Kimbrell, who assisted in data collection. We would also like to thank Danielle

Rudes for her comments on earlier drafts and the anonymous reviewers and editor for their helpful reviews.

Address correspondence to: Kimberly R. Kras, University of Massachusetts Lowell—Criminology and

Justice Studies, 113 Wilder Street, Lowell, MA 01854, USA. Telephone: 978-934-4261; E-mail: Kimberly_

Kras@uml.edu.

LAW & POLICY, Vol. 39, No. 3, July 2017 ISSN 0265–8240

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C2017 The Authors

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C2017 The University of Denver/Colorado Seminary

doi: 10.1111/lapo.12079

officials and top managers but also the decisions made at the frontline regarding how to

enact the policy in practice. The street-level worker wields significant power as the

“ultimate” policy maker when implementing policy in practice.

Recently, scholars have started to recognize that frontline supervisors and middle man-

agers play important yet distinct roles in organizations, together operating as a “critical

nexus” between policy making and policy implementation (Vickovic and Griffin 2014;

Reeves et al. 2012; Rudes 2012; Steiner et al. 2012; Edelman 2008; Balogun 2003; Huy

2002). Scholarship traditionally views supervisors as “company men” who primarily

focus on connecting written policy to organizational action at the street level (Whyte

1956). Under this traditional view, frontline supervisors are responsible for translating

policy into practice, but this view does little to elaborate on how they use their discretion

when interacting with subordinates and superiors day to day.

1

Due to their location near

the bottom of the organizational hierarchy, but with the authority associated with the

management team, frontline supervisors operate in a unique space connecting policy for-

mation to on-the-ground action but are often excluded from the experience of the street-

level bureaucrat. As Rudes (2012, 4) notes, “mid-level actors maintain a level of autono-

mous interpretive power dissimilar to that experienced by other organizational actors in

higher and lower workplace positions.” Frontline supervisors are charged not only with

ensuring compliance from the workers they supervise but also, importantly, with inter-

preting and framing organizational policies and plans for the workers who must imple-

ment them with the citizens they serve.

The role of power within correctional organizations often focuses on the power of

street-level workers to gain compliance from prisoners, parolees, or probationers (Steiner

et al. 2012; Hepburn 1985). Power dynamics, however, are also at work within the organi-

zation and have the potential to shape the ways in which policies are ultimately enacted

by staff. Here, we explore how frontline supervisors experience and mobilize their power

and how their subordinates—street-level community corrections officers—view and expe-

rience the power and authority of their immediate supervisors. Because they are charged

with enforcing mandates of the state and organization via their frontline staff while also

negotiating the constraints of their position as dictated by local-level power struggles,

frontline supervisors in community corrections provide an ideal opportunity to explore

the role, authority, and power of the lower-level manager. After discussing the literature

on the role and power of frontline supervisors and on traditional street-level views of mid-

dle managers, we provide information on the context of community supervision generally

and of this study in particular. We go on to discuss data from our study and our findings

regarding how frontline supervisors are seen by street-level workers and by the frontline

supervisors themselves. Finally, the conclusion assesses how this influences the organiza-

tion and the potential effects of frontline supervisors on policy interpretation and street-

level implementation.

FRONTLINE SUPERVISORS, STREET-LEVEL WORKERS, AND POWER

WITHIN THE ORGANIZATION

Lipsky’s (1980) conceptualization of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) as powerful figures

in hierarchical organizations due to their ultimate discretion and influence on policy mak-

ing has substantively shaped the scholarly study of staff in public service agencies. SLBs’

power results from their role as intermediaries between the organization and the people it

serves. SLBs determine which rules to enforce and which strategies to practice, thereby

exhibiting an inherent autonomy while working, often unobserved by supervisors, on the

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