Flexible bureaucracies : discretion, creativity, and accountability in labor market regulation and public sector management

This dissertation is about state bureaucracies and the conditions under which they learn, innovate, and play a positive role in social and economic development. It takes issue with the extant literature on the topic, which has either looked at such organizations from the outside and prescribed the "essential" prerequisites for success (e.g. corporate coherence, cohesiveness, performance management, etc.) or examined such organizations from the inside and emphasized the obstacles for change and improvement (e.g. resistance to change and impediments for accountability in "street-level bureaucracies"). In contrast to these approaches, this dissertation aimed at understanding how bureaucrats behave (what they do) when they actually promote development. Through what processes do bureaucrats manage to learn, change, innovate, and solve problems? Why in some cases they use their discretion to serve rather than, as previous literatures have asserted, to thwart the public interest? The research involved extensive data collection through on-site fieldwork on the Brazilian Labor Inspection Department, as well as detailed investigations of a sample of 27 cases of labor inspectors' intervention in different economic sectors and states. This sampling strategy generated a series of subnational and controlled comparative analyses at three distinct levels: a) variation in behaviors at the street-level; b) management practices and structures, their effects on work routines and inspection practices; and c) the role of narratives about work and horizontal relationships within the organization.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Pires, Roberto Rocha Coelho

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Judith Tendler.

• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/55135

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/55135