The Self-Sufficiency Ideology: The Bureaucratic Constraints on Manager Identity that Shape Manager Perceptions of the Welfare-to-Work Program in North Carolina.

Using telephone interviews with 100 welfare-to-work program managers in North Carolina, I examine the ways in which manager identities shape the perceptions of challenges and barriers to achieving client self-sufficiency and the ways in which these managers would make changes to the welfare-to-work program. Drawing from Watkins-Hayes (2009) and Taylor and Seale (2012), I find that manager identities are distinct in the ways in which they talk about the program and clients. Social work managers focus on challenges and barriers that are out of the control of the client, such as the economy, and the ways in which they can help clients. Efficiency engineers exemplify Merton’s (1940) bureaucratic personality, individuals whom stress the importance of agency standards and meeting benchmarks to make clients self-sufficient. Conflicted managers however are caught between helping clients and policing them for not meeting agency standards, similar to Lipsky’s (1980) street-level bureaucrats. I find that manager identities coincide with perceptions of challenges and barriers in relation to clients’ inability to achieve self-sufficiency and with the changes that managers would make to the program in North Carolina.

Name thesis:degree_name

MA

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Sociology and Criminology

Grantor dc:publisher

Kent State University

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Towne-Roese, Jackuelyn K.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Taylor, Tiffany

• Sociology
• Social Work
• Bureaucracy
• Identity
• Organizations
• Welfare
• Social Services

Statement dc:rights

• unrestricted
• This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1365768627

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:etd.ohiolink.edu:kent1365768627