Street-Level Leadership: Re-conceptualizing the Role of the Manager

• Published date: 01 September 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X231155357
• Author: Anne Mette Møller,Caroline Howard Grøn
• Date: 01 September 2024

https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X231155357

Review of Public Personnel Administration

2024, Vol. 44(3) 544 –565

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X231155357

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Article

Street-Level Leadership:

Re-conceptualizing the

Role of the Manager

Anne Mette Møller1

and Caroline Howard Grøn1

Abstract

Street-level workers are notoriously difficult to manage. Over the years, scholars have

highlighted the importance of social dynamics and informal and collective leadership

in street-level contexts. Yet, the question of how formal managers can support

street-level workers’ performance and well-being remains underexplored. Building

on insights from the street-level and generic leadership literatures, the authors seek

to delineate a role for formal managers that takes seriously the particularities of

the street-level context. The authors develop a concept of street-level leadership

that is underpinned by a relational approach and focused on activating street-level

workers’ professional knowledge and building supportive communities, with the

purpose of supporting professional uses of discretion, conscientious prioritizations,

and the ability to handle moral dilemmas and emotional strain. Empirical examples

illustrate street-level leadership in practice. Future research should explore the

proposed mechanisms and effects of street-level leadership, including important

HRM outcomes such as job satisfaction, retention, and burnout.

Keywords

frontline workers, leadership, management, street-level bureaucracy, discretion,

professionals

1Crown Prince Frederik Center for Public Leadership, Aarhus University, Denmark

Corresponding Author:

Caroline Howard Grøn, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Bartholins Allé 7, Aarhus C

8000, Denmark.

Email: cg@ps.au.dk

1155357ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X231155357Review of Public Personnel AdministrationMøller and Grøn

research-article2023

Møller and Grøn 545

Introduction

Ever since Lipsky (2010) coined the term street-level bureaucracy and pointed out

that the traditional top-down approach to implementation grossly underestimated its

importance, the public administration literature has taken a strong interest in under-

standing street-level workers’ behavior and, not least, how to manage it. This ques-

tion is pertinent for public administration because it relates to the fundamental

question of how policy is enacted on the ground. However, it is also highly relevant

to scholars with an HRM interest, because the complexity of street-level work and the

experienced gap between policy and practice place great demands on street-level

workers (Guy et al., 2014; Lavee & Strier, 2019; Sciepura & Linos, 2022) and hold

potential negative consequences for goal clarity, mission valence, job satisfaction,

organizational commitment, and extra-role behavior (Caillier, 2016; Wright &

Pandey, 2011) . In short, the street-level context calls for leadership. Yet, the gist of

the extant literature is that managing street-level workers is challenging for a variety

of reasons (e.g., Brehm & Gates, 1999; Keulemans & Groeneveld, 2020; Lipsky,

2010; Riccucci, 2005).

Lipsky views the relationship between street-level workers and managers as inher-

ently conflictual, as managers are oriented toward the political goals of organizations,

whereas street-level bureaucrats are more oriented toward developing “shortcuts and

simplifications to cope with the press of responsibilities” and maintaining their auton-

omy (Lipsky, 2010, p. 18). The central tenets of principal-agent theory—that is, goal

conflicts between street-level workers and managers, information asymmetry, and

utility maximization—are all present in Lipsky’s analysis. Following Lipsky, much of

the literature has cast formal managers primarily as—more or less powerless—agents

of control (e.g., Brehm & Gates, 1999; Riccucci, 2005). Yet, several contributions

point to the need to explore the actual roles and practices of street-level managers

more closely.

First, street-level managers often share workers’ professional backgrounds—an

observation, which blurs the line of conflict that is central to Lipsky’s argument

(Evans, 2016). Second, there are important differences between managers on different

levels (Gassner & Gofen, 2018; Hupe & Keiser, 2019). Third, several scholars have

highlighted the importance of social dynamics and informal processes of leadership in

street-level contexts (Keulemans & Groeneveld, 2020; Vinzant & Crothers, 1998).

Fourth, studies that build on the leadership literature rather than the street-level litera-

ture have documented significant performance effects of formalized leadership in rela-

tion to employees who could be characterized as street-level workers, such as high

school teachers (Jacobsen & Andersen, 2015), nurses (Bellé, 2014), and law enforce-

ment officers (Hassan et al., 2019). To this, we may add the importance of leadership

for job satisfaction, which also finds application in a street-level context (Cantarelli

et al., 2016).

In this article, we seek to delineate a space for formal street-level leadership that

builds on these important contributions to further advance how the street-level litera-

ture approaches and conceptualizes management, or leadership.1 Building on insights