The work of exemplary practitioners in neighborhood governance

Abstract

In order to understand how exemplary work is done in the complex urban environment of disadvantaged neighborhoods, we studied a group of 43 individuals – civil servants, professionals and active citizens – who make a difference. Various so-called ‘exemplary practitioners’ were found in the literature and in the neighborhoods of five cities. The working methods of exemplary practitioners show a mix and a dose of entrepreneurialism, strategic networking and empathic engagement that differ from standard bureaucracy but fit very well with what is needed in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Two striking examples illustrate these working methods.

Keywords:

• boundary spanners
• neighborhoods
• social entrepreneurs
• frontline workers
• shadowing

Acknowledgments

While working on this article, we have been associates of NICIS Institute, The Hague (now Platform 31). Previous versions of this article were presented in sessions at the Interpretive Policy Analysis Conference (Grenoble) and a NICIS seminar on Neighbourhood Dynamics and Social Mobility (The Hague), both in 2010. We would like to thank the organizers and participants in those sessions for their comments. We would like to thank Eva Bosch and Ton van der Pennen (Delft University of Technology) for the discussions in our research group and three anonymous reviewers for Critical Policy Studies. Finally, the research would not have succeeded without exemplary practitioners giving us access to their practice. We want to thank in particular the two practitioners whose work is discussed in this article.

Notes

1. For a recent report, see, for instance, Van den Brink and Bruinsma (2011).

2. To be sure, the concept of complexity is used differently by various authors. Lipsky (2010, p. 83) for instance says that ‘routines and simplifications aid the management of complexity; environmental structuring limits the complexity to be managed’. When Lipsky (2010) talks about complexity he is talking about the complexity that individuals have to deal with as a result of earlier mentioned mismatches, but his is not explicitly taking a complexity theoretical perspective. In this article we take the observations of complexity theorists in public administration as a starting point. What they do is explain why there is (still) a problem with the notion of centrally planned policy as the effort to structurally erase public problems.

3. This is not to be confused with best practice, which is mostly treated as a practice stripped of the actors that carry it. Leadbeater and Goss (1998, p. 22) say something wise about this: ‘Good practice can never be bottled and applied somewhere else like an ointment. There are no one-size-fits-all, magic solutions to complex social problems. The public sector is highly heterogeneous: entrepreneurial solutions will vary for different organizations, with different histories, cultures, users and political leadership’.

4. The concept of exemplars was suggested by John Forester (personal communication). The use we make of the term might conflict with the way he sees things. The idea of exemplarity gets a profound treatment in the recent work of Aletta Norval (2007).

5. In comparison to our previous literature scan, we basically selected two types that we found in the field and added two more types that we only referred to briefly in previous papers.

6. What is important in dealing with concrete situations, as Durose (2009) for instance stressed, is that front-line workers have to be more networkers than street-level bureaucrats because they build relationships with their community.

7. Engbersen et al. (2007) looked at social leaders in Dutch disadvantaged neighborhoods. They stated that it was especially the ability to make a difference on the basis of personal qualities and engagement, that is special.

8. Lowndes (2005) talked about institutional entrepreneurs, who remind us of policy entrepreneurs. Leadbeater and Goss (1998) have talked about civic entrepreneurs and Durose (2009, 2011) has likened front-line workers to civic entrepreneurs. More recent work on policy entrepreneurs is presented in Huitema and Meijerink (2009) and by Mintrom and Norman (2009). In research on neighborhoods, variations of the concept have gained popularity over the last few years (Hendriks and Tops 2005, Durose 2009, Van de Wijdeven and Hendriks 2009, Giltay Veth 2009).

9. Everyday fixers are a variation of the everyday maker Bang and Sorensen (1999) talked about.

10. The idea of everyday fixers builds on the idea of the everyday maker whose working methods have been listed by Bang and Sorensen (1999). However, in our opinion the difference Tops and Hendriks observe between fixers and makers (they suggest it is the result of a cultural difference) is crucial. Everyday makers are much closer to the political/administrative system as a result of their bigger networks in it and their prolonged involvement with what happens in the public domain.

11. Efficiency does not seem to be their worry.

12. Social entrepreneurs might be most active in networks in the social sphere and hardly in the political-administrative system, for political and policy entrepreneurs the opposite might count. It needs to be pointed out that boundary spanners are less bound to one organization than front-line workers in general.

13. We are not aware of other who have used this concept to talk about their ‘sampling’ strategy. Murphy (1980), however, talks about scouting that analysts can do for the evaluation of programs.

14. We do admit that this way of finding people has a certain bias. We do not believe, however, that looking for people can be done without any bias. For instance, if we would have asked local government to come up with a list, this list would have had a ‘governmental’ bias. Our colleague did talk to people in local government to get some good leads, but worked mostly independently. In the end he went over the list with people in local government. In one of the cities there was some resistance against one of the names on the list because this person had gotten into conflict with a high-ranking public official. The person remained on the list anyhow and became part of the research.

15. As researchers, we have been moving back and forth between observations that triggered the project, the literature, hunches and empirical observations. This iterative, circular research practice has been supported by the organization around the investigation. Our investigation is embedded in a consortium with three research institutes and five cities. The various moments of interaction were used to shape and reshape the project.

16. They are both white males born around 1950 who became involved in neighborhood work in the second half of their careers.

17. This difference with the way our first practitioner works also shows itself in that his contact in the neighborhood is mostly with social entrepreneurs from civil society and not so much with individual residents or groups of residents.

18. The difference between the working methods of the civil servant and those of the social worker can partly be explained by the former's professional identity as a civil servant. But it may be just the other way around: a more diplomatic character would gravitate more naturally towards a job in the civil service, than work as a social worker.

19. Compare Giltay Veth (2009). He talks about survival of the fittest (project and practitioners) in Dutch disadvantaged neighborhoods. Survival of the fitting is an expression of Kenneth Boulding (see Morgan 1986).