Street-level bureaucrats as strategy shapers in social and health service delivery: Empirical evidence from six countries

Abstract

In this research article, we discuss the social construction of public services within the conceptual and theoretical framework provided by Lipsky. We are interested in what it means if/when street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) have an active role in the construction of a service system. We argue that there are multiple realities in terms of the construction of public services and we approach the question by deploying Lipsky’s notion on SLBs by empirically analysing middle managers’ views on how SLBs act and their role in this construction process. This paper is based on empirical interviews (N=100) collated in 2012 from Barcelona, Den Bosch, Glasgow, Melbourne, Toronto, Vancouver, the Greater London area, and the US state of Vermont. The research collation strategy was to include reform-oriented cities and countries in terms of developing and delivering public services. We found that SLBs have three different kinds of strategies in the construction process: policy-making, working practices, and professionalism. We found that there are no conflicts arising from SLBs’ beliefs, organisational demands, and rules and regulations. Instead, SLBs try to solve conflicts or bridge gaps between policy-making and practical work in the boundaries between SLBs and service users. Based on this research, the role of SLBs and the built-in flexibility and agility of public service leadership and organisations must be addressed and developed further. The role of organisational learning and changing organisational cultures must also be scrutinized in the context of public service systems. The analysis of professional resilience in the context of public services planning needs more theoretical and empirical attention. The resilience of organisations and the capacities of SLBs need to be researched more. Finally, there is the need for better cultivation of the role of the SLBs and service users with regard to accountability aspects (horizontal and vertical).

Keywords

Public policy-making public service systems service user street-level bureaucrats

Introduction

Public service delivery has become an important development topic in a number of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, while general issues relating to public services continue to remain high on the research agenda, particularly in relation to the role of public services in the framework of new public management (NPM). Academic discussions and debates have sought to understand the new service ideology and service-dominant logic as a framework for the production and delivery of public services (e.g. Hartley and Sketcher, 2008; Osborne, 2009; Osborne et al., 2013; Stenvall and Virtanen, 2015; Virtanen and Kaivo-oja, 2015). Some researchers have even gone as far as to suggest that this process should be viewed as a transfer from a production-oriented to a service-oriented approach in public service delivery (e.g. Osborne, 2009). The role of the service users and the need to emphasise new models of organisational knowledge management have created a new practice for learning in public sector organisations (e.g. Rashman et al., 2009), while Virtanen and Stenvall (2014) have argued that public organisations have to be more intelligent in the future in order to cope with this changing operational environment.

From an agency perspective, research evidence exists which suggests that service users have become increasingly active in the development of public service delivery modes in a number of ways, such as through various co-production and co-creation techniques (e.g. Alves, 2013; Hardyman et al., 2015). Thus, this approach focuses on what public organisations can learn from service users and how public organisations utilise intelligent solutions to create conditions for personal learning among service users (Osborne and Strokosch, 2013), rather than on what the public sector can provide in terms of services for service users. Research evidence also suggests that frontline public service workers – such as social workers, doctors and nurses – have taken an active role in the development of public service delivery (Payne, 2014; Spilg et al., 2012).

Our task in this research article is to approach frontline workers’ activities by building upon Lipsky’s (1980) insights and terminology in respect of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs). Lipsky argues that the SLBs are powerful actors who have the possibility to influence public policy implementation and public service delivery. Lipsky’s work generated a number of further studies on frontline professional practice in public organisations, with this research clearly having an impact on the subsequent development and renewal of public services (e.g. Evans and Harris, 2004; Walker and Gilson, 2004).

Our research question thus concerns the social construction of the public services (Brunsson and Sahlin-Andersson, 2000), referencing the conceptual and theoretical framework provided by Lipsky (1980). We are interested in what it actually means to say that SLBs play an active role in the construction of the public service system (e.g. Wright, 2006). With regard to ontology, we have adopted the view that there are multiple realities in terms of the construction of public services. To this end, we approach the SLB’s role by focusing on middle managers’ – responsible for service delivery in terms of leadership and management – views about the subject. We take as our starting point an argument by Fernandez and Pitts (2007), Rashman et al. (2009), Fernandez et al. (2010) and Fernandez and Rainey (2006), emphasising middle managers’ role in organisational changes in the public sector. The idea is thus to develop the idea of SLBs as a powerful actor in service delivery terms by focusing empirically on the middle managers’ views of public service institutions.

The reason for this kind of empirical approach is the fact that middle managers occupy a central position in change management practices in the public sector (e.g. Fernandez and Pitts, 2007; Fernandez and Rainey, 2006) and therefore we believe that it is very important to analyse their views about the public service construction process. We thus approach our research question by deploying Lipsky’s (1980) notion on SLBs by analysing, empirically, middle managers’ views on how SLBs act and what their role is in this process in terms of constructing the strategies of public service delivery. We suggest that SLBs have strategies by which they try to maintain themselves as a useful resource and thus as powerful actors in the public service system. We base our analysis on the work by Tuurnas et al. (2015), who have conceptually distinguished three separate, though in practical terms overlapping, strategies that are important in the construction of service systems, and we assume that these strategies are valid also in analysing the role of the SLBs. These strategies relate to policy-making, working practices and professionals.

Our article is organised as follows. Following this introduction we present our empirical ‘case’, including the data, the method, the research limitations and ethical aspects, which we took into account during the data collation process. The third part of the article discusses the conceptual frameworks for this study – the development of the service ideology and SLBs’ three-dimensional strategies. In the fourth part, we present our empirical evidence. Finally, we provide conclusions in which we summarise our findings and sketch a potential future research agenda for this field.

Data, method and methodology

We interviewed altogether 100 informants for our study – middle managers responsible for managing service delivery in the social and healthcare sectors – in 2012 (in The Greater London area and Glasgow in the United Kingdom, the state of Vermont in the United States, Toronto and Vancouver in Canada, Den Bosch in the Netherlands, Barcelona in Spain and Melbourne in Australia). Our aim is not, however, to produce a comparative analysis of these cities, but rather to collate empirical data from different countries representing Esping-Andersen’s liberal welfare regime. Our research collation strategy was in fact that we wanted to include reform-oriented cities and countries in terms of the development and delivery of public services (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2009). We were also interested in those cities that are famous for developing social and healthcare services in an integrated manner, including new service models (e.g. Lyngsø et al., 2014) and developing modern public management leadership (the NPM and the new public governance (NPG)) ideologies and practices (Kellehear, 2005; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011).

The interviews were carried out by two researchers and they were structured in either an individual or a focus group format. The interview sample for each city consisted of 10–15 interviewed civil servants from the public service sector and government officials at the middle management level. The interviewees were presented with four broad topics for discussion: the role of frontline professionals in delivering and organising services, the role of the service users in public service delivery and the effect this has on the frontline professionals, the ability of frontline professionals to shape public policies and the opportunities open to them to do so, and how horizontal accountability demands affect frontline professionals.

In sum, our aim is not to make comparisons between the case cities, but rather to look for the common trajectories/themes emerging from the interviews and discussions across all of the cities under study. We looked for features common to all case studies and these features we labelled trajectories. All site visits and interviews were conducted between May and August 2012. In each city, the interviewees represented two distinct groups of managerial professionals: senior management of social and health services and second, leading experts – that is, planning officers, strategy analysts, business process controllers and so on. The interviewees were promised that they would not be identified by their city or by their profession.

Further comment on the selection logic for the cities is appropriate here. The majority of these countries (with the exception of the Netherlands) and cities in which the data were collated belong to a type of liberal welfare regime to follow Esping-Andersen’s (2013 [1990]) treatise of welfare regimes. According to Esping-Andersen (2013 [1990]), the definition of welfare regimes concerns the relation between state and economy. Decommodification, social stratification and the public–private mix in respect of service delivery are the cornerstones of Esping-Andersen’s typology, and these conceptual dimensions help draw the distinction between three ideal types of welfare regimes: the liberal, the conservative (to which the Netherlands belongs to some extent) and the social democratic/Nordic. In the liberal welfare state, means-tested assistance, modest universal transfers, strict entitlement criteria, outsourcing of public services and modest social insurance predominate. We think that Esping-Andersen’s welfare regimes are ideal types in which the boundaries between the types are fluid: the position of the Netherlands in his typology is particularly unclear. Thus, it is not possible to classify it to any of the three as it shares elements of each in varying measure.

Our ‘meta-theory’ in carrying out the empirical part of our research is the transformation of public services into multi-agency service systems rather than understanding public service agencies as single organisations (e.g. Osborne et al., 2013; Virtanen and Kaivo-oja, 2015). Our contribution is thus to note that austerity, personalisation and service integration are driving the new governances beyond inter-organisational coordination into more closely coupled service systems, in which service users (as co-producers) play an active role.

Conceptual framework I: The three generations of services and service science

According to Normann (1995), there are three separate stages – or generations – in service science development. The first generation concentrated primarily on single public services and service sectors. To this end, Osborne et al. (2013) and Virtanen and Stenvall (2014) have argued that this kind of thinking was predominant for the NPM ideology, echoing a closed system view of thinking. This view emphasised the fact that the main idea or objective was to understand the laws governing certain services: services were organised centrally around the identification of customer need, but largely with a production-oriented or co-production approach. (See also Tuurnas et al., 2015.) From the public sector perspective, the notion of first generation services referred to the fact that each service organisation constitutes an independent unit. First generation service organisations have their own professionally trained staff. Services are organised in a production-oriented, top-down manner, with the legislative framework defining how these services are produced and for, as well as by, whom.

Second generation service science aimed at the creation of a comprehensive organising approach, arranging services in order to solve each individual customer’s problems. As such, second generation service science views service models as solutions to customers’ problems (e.g. Rummler and Brache, 1990). This meant that products and services were more or less interlinked. Similarly, these second generation services also emphasised operational service integration. This means that customers were offered services, that were collaboratively produced by several groups of professionals. This directs the focus to the information and skills necessary to integrate functionally separate services. Operating across organisational borders acts as a catalyst for learning (e.g. Shulz, 2001).

Services of the third generation are based on the view that services should be organised within the framework of systemic thinking, deploying the ideas of Modern Systems Theory (Chesbrough, 2003; Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004; Virtanen and Stenvall, 2014). From this perspective, services are seen as constantly developing interactive processes, where reformation and learning are based on information, experience and in-process learning, including the realisation of services as well as the planning of service processes. In third generation services, it is possible then to apply the methods of learning by experience and learning by doing (e.g. Argyris, 1993, 2010; Kolb, 1984). Third generation services also introduced the concept of service co-creation and enhanced the culture of horizontal accountability (e.g. Schillemans, 2011).

The co-production ideology of the second service generation referred to services defined and developed together with the customer (Bovaird, 2007; Needham, 2008). The concept of co-creation of the third generation, on the other hand, referred to the planning of these services together with their customers in the spirit of an open innovation paradigm (Grönroos and Voima, 2011; Kaivo-oja, 2013; Kristensson et al., 2008; Meyer and Schwager, 2007; Santonen et al., 2011; Tuurnas et al., 2015; Vargo and Lusch, 2004; Virtanen and Kaivo-oja, 2015). The use of technology, for instance, enables the transfer of information, the involvement of customers in services and the production of interactive information and calls for new kinds of change management leadership models for the public sector.

Conceptual framework II: Street-level bureaucracy as a three-dimensional strategy

According to Lipsky (1980: 161), SLBs are professionals who make decisions about other people (see also Hill and Hupe, 2009; Hupe and Buffat, 2014). By definition, SLBs are typically teachers, social workers, nurses, doctors, police officers, public bus drivers and so on. They encounter service users in their work. Another distinctive feature related to SLBs is that they have many kinds of responsibilities. They work, for instance, in the fields of social and health care as supervisors, planners or developers of services, controllers, negotiators and co-operation agents (or network gatekeepers).

The concept of the SLB, as developed by Lipsky (1980), needs however to be embedded into a more sophisticated discussion highlighting the tensions inherent within the role, and one which is dependent upon organisational context and personal interests. For instance, the assumption that SLBs develop explicit strategies to maintain themselves as resources and powerful actors in the system misses the relevant discussion on discretion, coping under the pressure of change, resisting change, adopting a paternalistic mentality towards service users and even engaging in policy sabotage.

Tuurnas et al. (2015) have conceptually distinguished three separate, though overlapping, strategies that are important in the construction of service systems. In the following, we adopt this three-dimensional strategy typology as the framework upon which to present our empirical findings.

The first strategy conveys the idea that SLBs try to play an active role as policy makers. Given this, SLBs should be understood as a reform resource and as powerful actors who influence policy implementation. We argue that Lipsky offers an intellectual space from which to explore how SLBs demonstrate official (public) policy in the context of their relationships with their service users. Despite the fact that there are formal rules and vertical control over their work, SLBs apply the rules and create their own ethical codes in order to best tackle their work tasks. SLBs act in the boundary between the two worlds – the public service systems and the users of services – translating policy goals into concrete and perceived actions. This relation is reciprocal in essence, meaning that the SLBs also transfer the information of the effectiveness and productivity of the service interventions (from the boundary in-between the system and service users) vertically from ‘street-level’ to, in hierarchical terms, the upper levels of decision-making. As such, it is from here that the idea of SLBs as policy makers comes.

The second strategy deployed by SLBs relates to working practices. This means that SLBs take an active role in defining the content of their day-to-day work. A significant amount of research evidence already exists on SLB actions in relation to working methods, values and practices, as well as on the discretion, freedom and self-interest of frontline workers in public organisations (e.g. Ellis et al., 1999; Evans and Harris, 2004). SLBs’ ability to increase their level of discretion in respect of their working practices is a key tool in their day-to-day existence. Discretion here concerns the extent to which a worker has, in a specific context, the freedom to innovate and focuses on the factors that give rise to that freedom in that context. Looking more closely at the debate over this notion of discretion, it is clear that significant differences exist between what we may term the ‘continuation’ and ‘curtailment’ positions, differences which focus on beliefs about organisations’ desire for and ability to secure control and on the workers’ ability to resist control and seek discretion (Evans and Harris, 2004; Hupe and Buffat, 2014).

SLBs’ third strategy refers to professionalism. This relates to the fact that SLBs try to increase their professional groups’ autonomy as a part of the service system. This perspective highlights the role of professionalism, and the notion that SLBs face constant difficulties in maintaining control in different organisational structures, and especially in large organisational settings. These include the need to consider signals from political superiors, organisational arrangements, enhancements in staff capacity and managerial supervision. Lipsky’s original notion was designed to acknowledge and identify such a function for professionals as a way of understanding how they are active players themselves in the process of forming policy. The problem here is surely that in the 35 years since Lipsky wrote his famous work the relationship between the state and the individual has fundamentally changed, as has the role of the ‘professional’ as an intermediary between the two. In an era when people were recipients of welfare, welfare professionals were designated as being facilitators, making sure that both sides were serviced – there was significant room for discretion. In the new existence, however, where performance standards and indicators are centrally set and where service users have actionable rights and do not just receive state ‘charity’, the level of discretion open to SLBs is likely to be much smaller.

Empirical findings

The strategy of policy-making

The policy-making ‘strategy’ conveys the idea that SLBs adopt the role of a group who define the identity of the public service system. This is interesting since it is not clear what the concept of identity means in practice in multiple-actor service systems (e.g. Ashfort and Fred, 1989; Jian, 2011; Kodein and Greenwood, 2014; Ravazi and Schultz, 2006; Schultz et al., 2012). The interviewees suggested that SLBs play an active role in defining the identity of the new public service systems currently being developed. Most interviewees, moreover, noted that the ‘new’ systems worked more flexibly and innovatively than the ‘old’ ones, because they had less centralised top-down regulation and more local autonomy. As such, the majority of the interviewees noted that if the SLBs have the space to collaborate with their peers and service users and to produce situated and local solutions to the issues facing them, this would be far better than proceeding in line with bureaucratic procedures and protocols:

Interview sample 1

… And I think it’s the difference between, and I would put orientation where we were for a very long time, to a true outcome orientation, where the outcome is the individual’s desired outcome as opposed to the system’s desired output. […] What people knew, was that care costs were too high, care was fragmented, it was not delivering the quality that people needed so that really was the very basic motivation of how we can do things differently here …

Interview sample 2

… So, if we were to ask people using our services what the difference is, they would say it’s the fact that they tend to have one care coordinator when they ‘enter services’. They no longer have multiple assessments. They may still have some specialist assessments, but we’ve significantly reduced that …

The interviewees used the terms ‘new’ and ‘old’ and ‘previous services’ and ‘existing services’ and emphasised the uniqueness of new service models. They then compared the services they were in charge of to other public services. The interviewees argued that the SLBs view themselves as primary movers in public services. According to the interviewees, SLB’s strategy is to create something unusual, which makes them powerful actors as policy makers. The interviewees also noted that new service models – and the emergent ‘third generation services’ – represent something of a revolution in the public service system.

The issue of identity does not only concern the practices of public services. Many of those interviewed underlined that the change processes being utilised in respect of public service systems are very different from those in traditional service systems. They argue that third generation services should be developed in the context of a bottom-up approach rather than a top-down one and thus that the contribution, attitude and presence of SLBs is relevant here (see also Tummers and Bekkers, 2014; Tuurnas et al., 2015; Virtanen and Kaivo-oja, 2015). The research literature indicates that bottom-up processes create new kinds of knowledge in respect of the public services: knowledge becomes contextual, depending on the actors, communities, working practices and so on (Gergen and Gergen, 2004). In our interview data, many interviewees emphasised the knowledge that SLBs possess, obtained in development processes aiming at the renewal of service systems. This is in accordance with postmodern organisation philosophy (e.g. Gergen, 1994) stressing the local context and interaction processes in knowledge creation:

Interview sample 3

… We are able to handle a lot of the interventions right there in the office before things get more serious to prevent crisis and it works really well […] and all of it is about what the person wants to have happen […] so it is customer driven. We call it self-management, but it’s looking at what does that person want to have happen. We may think we may have all the answers, but we try to focus on what that person wants, not what we think should happen. And that has really been a shift for many of us […] to put the patient at the centre of the design of their care and it works […] And nurses, doctors, social workers are all trained in self-management techniques and it’s at the core of everything we do every day …

To summarise, the interplay between top-down and bottom-up factors seems to correlate with the outcomes of policy change when we look at the interview data as a whole. It also seems evident that this interplay is related to the close mental distance between the SLBs and service users. Close mental distance here means the existence of a high degree of interaction, trust, empathy and shared values between service users and SLBs arising from mutual attachment and shared destiny as well as a reduction in traditional paternalistic modes of professional work.

The strategy of working practices

Based on the interviews, SLB’s strategy is to define new kinds of working practices for the development of public services towards the goal of creating an integrated model. Given this, many of the interviewees suggested that the world had changed and that is why it is very important that SLBs work differently. This concerns not only practices but also the mind-set of frontline workers as well. The point here is that malfunctions occur within service systems and the interviewees suggested that the SLB’s role will be crucial in finding new solutions in respect of the creation of better services. This is the mode of thinking that Argyris (1993, 2010) terms ‘double loop learning’ and – taking into account the systemic nature of service systems within the open systems world – what has also been labelled ‘triple loop learning’ (e.g. Flood and Romm, 1996).

Our interview data suggest that working culture is currently undergoing a radical change with regard to public service systems – and not only because of systemic change factors in the operating environment of the public service systems (e.g. Virtanen and Kaivo-oja, 2015). The change relates to the existence of the new horizontal and vertical collaboration and learning demands between SLBs at various levels with these boundaries clearly also being important for the development of working practices. The SLB strategy is to create a system in which, rather than administrators or policy makers taking all the decisions, they have autonomy in making decisions concerning the content of services, the service users and so on:

Interview sample 4

… Because social workers and doctors more or less have the same values we say to staff we don’t want people fighting over service users […] if they need a service, deliver it and we’ll worry about who will pay as we’ll sort it out, if you can’t. And over the years, less come to us because that culture is getting sorted out at the Head of Service Level. Team Managers sometimes still have a bit of that’s mine and that’s yours, but that’s breaking down […] These are well-being and the different disciplines, care, and well-being, we bring them together to have that holistic view and frontline workers are very important in this process. […] Cure, care and welfare were very isolated structures in services and we thought it was more cost efficient and better for the care as a whole that they start working together more.

Service users and local communities are important elements in the development of future public service systems. According to this view, the development of public service systems occurs in an open system where knowledge becomes an elementary asset. The system is open not only to professional knowledge but also to the viewpoints of service users and the community more generally.

The interviewees acknowledged that in future, public service systems will be constructed by SLB with service users placed at the centre of the service development process. This metaphor was raised in practically all of the interviews conducted. The purpose seems to be to create a holistic approach for handling and managing service users’ problems and service needs. This requires a multi-professional approach by the SLBs and underlines the role and models of integrated care in social and healthcare services (see also Cameron et al., 2014; Ferrer and Goodwin, 2014; Goodwin, 2013; Lyngsø et al., 2014). Ontologically, it is important to grasp that the introduction of third generation services is unlikely to be the panacea that its supporters suggest. It will not end the struggle over service provision issues in some great Hegelian sense. This debate reminds us of that on NPG which, similarly, was supposed to provide the endpoint of discussion (e.g. Greve, 2015):

Interview sample 5

… But the client is at the centre. S/he has to confirm the possibilities, he is the owner of his own problem and information, and he is the boss in terms of who is going to care for him in the end. The service user is the bus driver so to say. […] We try to put the service user at the centre and then the social workers work for and around them. […] People are living human beings, they are not just patients. They are part of the neighbourhood, a family, and you have to look at all those different things … I think case management is the work for this and it is a very important feature of social work.

Based on our interviews, knowledge has been accumulated in terms of the community (and its networks), service users and SLBs. There seem, moreover, to be significant connections between the knowledge boundaries existing between these actors. In this light, SLBs desperately need the ability to work in collaboration with the people around the service users. It also seems apparent that contextual knowledge is meaningful in developing public services in a world of open systems. This makes public services not only unique but also useful for the community. The interviewees also paid a significant amount of attention to the local conditions which have the potential to affect service construction and to the role of the SLBs in that setting. As open systems, services can influence their environment by creating a local identity.

The strategy of professionalism

In the light of our interview data, the knowledge of working practices is linked to the strategy of professionalism. Professional ‘know-how’, the ‘craft of knowing how to do things’, is typically based on knowledge, which creates autonomy in relation to the service system. It seems that SLBs use such transformations as opportunities to increase the autonomy of professional groups. One ingredient in the strategy of professionalism is then to emphasise professional knowledge as a critical element in the development of public service systems:

Interview sample 6

… But one of the problems with this model is that people feel rather afraid of doing this bit in the middle, because they are thinking ‘I’m not a social worker, if something goes wrong, it’s me …’, so they are quite frightened of doing this work.

Within the domain of a closed service system, the metaphor that has been linked to NPM ideology (Osborne, 2006; Osborne et al., 2013; Virtanen and Stenvall, 2014), services are predetermined and of a standard type, even when the service user is engaged in the process. Engagement in closed systems relates to a consideration of how standard services produce value for the service users. Professionalism may, however, change within organisations implementing third generation services. Based on our interview data, it is clear that SLBs now have the autonomy to define what kind of professional knowledge would increase value for service users:

Interview sample 7

… And I think another thing that the practitioners team does really well is that it empowers people to be able to take control of that and to say to their provider, who may be forcing them into a particular treatment, that they can say, no I really don’t want to do that. Where in the past patients have thought I must follow whatever my doctor says – he is the doctor anyway. And the team really helps them, because there are so many different components to the team, all working together to improve that patient’s quality of life that the patient feels empowered …

The processes of classification and diversification can be incorporated with the mechanisms of professional ‘tribalisation’. In other words, the development of professions is a type of struggle wherein classification and diversification are among the methods applied. The most obvious ways of drawing lines between professions via classification and diversification are education, professional skills, information and knowledge, competence, values, and the ways in which they interact with service users. In processes such as these, which create and categorise professional tribes, multidisciplinary work and cross-professional approaches are typically perceived as a threat (Stenvall and Virtanen, 2015):

Interview sample 8

In this service delivery process you meet the hierarchical barriers, the ‘turf issues’, the resistance, and so on. In terms of multi-disciplinary care, they are all working towards the same goal, but they’re still working independently. Whereas the evidence for collaborative practice and inter-professional practice is that interdependence and efficiencies are gained through that interdependence. And right now the majority of our health professionals don’t understand that. They think that coordinating care, aligning or collocating care etc., is actually going to gain those efficiencies by itself. It will improve the healthcare system but it won’t produce the efficiencies of actually learning how to better understand how my role fits with someone else’s role and how we can streamline a patient from me to the next person, and the next person or the right person at the right time …

Based on our interview data, we would, however, like to emphasise that professional knowledge is based on the ideology that SLBs are good at working together to find solutions to practical problems or phenomena. This means that the contextual knowledge of services is particularly important for professionalism and its identity:

Interview sample 9

… We created some roles which were very much like a health & social care worker. In mental health, instead of having social workers, community psychiatric nurses, and occupational therapists we created mental health practitioners …

In sum, SLBs’ strategy on professionalism relates to knowledge and to the identity of professional groups in the construction of new service models. If a new service system creates better possibilities for using professional knowledge, it increases SLBs’ autonomy in the service system. The new identity of practical experts emphasises SLBs’ position as the key actors in respect of third generation services.

Discussion

Based on our empirical data, SLBs try to make service systems more flexible – in tandem with service users – through strategies relating to policy-making, working methods and professionalism. The argument here is that flexibility makes service systems more effective and equitable? It seems that the development of public service systems is grounded on the existence of an agile, ever-changing and open system. Lipsky (1980) emphasised the tensions between policy makers and the interests of SLBs. We discovered that no such conflicts arise from SLBs’ beliefs, organisational demands, and rules and regulations. Instead, SLBs try to solve conflicts or bridge gaps between policy-making and practical work in the boundaries between the SLBs and service users (see also Hupe and Buffat, 2014). Research evidence exists (e.g. Evans and Harris, 2004) which underlines the fact that contextual and cultural aspects explain the actions of SLBs.

In our study, we concentrated on the SLBs’ role in the strategy process concerning the construction of public service systems. It seems that SLBs do not necessarily work according to the service system’s principles, but rather they develop their own strategies to work with service users. The interesting question that remains is how SLBs really fulfil their tasks in respect of frontline service – serving the service users – and how organisational cultures change when working habits and attitudes change. This research agenda calls for a research where SLBs are key informants, since the frontline ‘status’ in terms of service delivery more or less pre-designates them for this important role in service systems.

Conclusion

In this research article, we have focused on SLBs’ roles as strategy shapers in the transformation process from single public service organisations towards public service systems. We have argued that SLBs have three different kinds of strategies in the construction process: the strategies of policy-making, working practices and professionalism. The strategy of policy-making refers to the fact that SLBs define a new kind of identity for public service systems. This makes them more or less prime movers in the construction of service systems because they create something unique in the development of these service systems. The bottom-up approach strengthens the position of SLBs. SLBs work in tandem with service users and the community, which makes them the key players in the service system. Interaction between SLBs and service users is crucial in terms of developing co-creation models holistically with service users. The strategy of professionalism is based on expert knowledge, but local and contextual knowledge are also important. If a service system provides greater opportunities to deploy professional knowledge, it strengthens SLBs’ position in the service system.

The research implications of this study are various and include the following:

The role of the SLBs and built-in flexibility and agility of public service leadership and organisations must be addressed and developed further.

The role of organisational learning and changing organisational cultures must be taken under scrutiny in the context of public service systems.

The analysis of professional resilience in the context of public services planning needs further theoretical and empirical attention. The resilience of organisations and the capacities of the SLBs need also require further research.

The role of SLBs and service users with regard to accountability aspects (horizontal and vertical) needs to be more fully cultivated.

Footnotes

Funding

The empirical research for this article was made possible by a research grant from the City of Helsinki, Finland.

Author biographies

Petri Virtanen is currently a Professor of Social and Health Policy at the University of Tampere, School of Health, Finland, and Adjunct Professor at the Universities of Lapland, Tampere and Helsinki, Finland. His research interests cover the topics of organisational intelligence, public services, social and healthcare services, public policy and leadership. His latest publications have been published in Public Organization Review, Financial Accountability and Management, International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology and Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management.

Ilpo Laitinen is Adjunct Professor at the University Lapland. He is both a senior level director and researcher, and works across the boundaries of academia and the public sector. He is internationally experienced in the fields of public administration, social and health care management, smart cities, innovation management and HEIs within learning regions and higher education and policy research. His latest publication have been published in Journal of Adult and Continuing Education.

Jari Stenvall is currently a Professor of Administrative Sciences at the University of Tampere. His areas of research cover the reform and evaluation of public administration, change management, service management, higher education research, and the utilisation of information technology in organisations. His latest publications have been published in Public Organization Review, Financial Accountability and Management and Journal of Adult and Continuing Education.

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