ABSTRACT
Lipsky's account of discretion in street-level bureaucracies is closely related to his understanding of the relationship of managers and street-level bureaucrats. This chapter will outline this aspect of Lipsky's theory and consider the subsequent development of a street-level bureaucracy literature. Discretion is the freedom in exercising one's work role is a central concern for Lipsky in Street-Level Bureaucracy. In the complex and chaotic world of public service, he argues, discretion is necessary to make policy work, but the need for discretion can give rise to street-level practices that undermine effective policy implementation and the organisational accountability of street-level workers. For Lipsky, street-level bureaucrats and their managers operate in significantly different ways. They have different job priorities and commitments and different values, and they use different strategies. Finally, where street-level bureaucrats are seen as professionals in the narrow sense, it points to another perspective on their organisation and its managers' expectations of their use of discretion.
