Frontline Problem Solvers: The Structuring of Frontline Service Work

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the understanding of the role of frontline employees in organizing public service delivery. Combining inspiration from organizational institutionalism and social theory of practice, this study offers an integrative understanding of frontline agency in organizational dynamics during the institutionalization of a public sector reform. Findings are presented from an ethnographic field study of frontline employees' strategies of adopting new structures of service work during the institutionalization of a public reform. The study illustrates how frontline actions provide the basis for both stability and change in the structures through which frontline work is organized. The agency exerted by frontline employees in institutionalization of reforms may have both equilibrating effects as well as deepen the gaps between the public sector and the public served.

Keywords:

• street-level bureaucracy
• frontline organization
• service delivery
• agency