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Providing individualized services under complex conditions: A configurational analysis of street‐level organizations

T. Andreassen,Eric Breit,Therese Saltkjel

Published 2024 in Public Administration

ABSTRACT

Individualized services are provided under complex conditions, as a variety of factors can affect the ability of a street‐level organization to adapt its services to individual needs and circumstances. Especially challenging are tensions between the means of control and standardization following new public management (NPM) and post‐NPM ideas of holistic and coordinated services. Through a fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis of Norwegian sector‐spanning street‐level organizations, we show three different configurations that can promote individualized services. These consist of variations of structural circumstances (size, service variety); organizational responses (goal coherence, cross working); and manager capacity (professional background, managerial orientation). Service individualization is not an outcome of the interaction between street‐level workers and clients alone, but an outcome of street‐level organizations and their managers' use of measures and competencies across service sectors, and of their capacity to develop a shared perception of goals and an organization that handles institutional complexity.

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