Street-Level Institutional Work: How Social Workers Maintain, Disrupt, and Create the Rules of Social Organizations

Abstract

Research has shown that street-level workers may shape public policies, yet less is known about the processes through which they attempt to influence institutional arrangements. This gap is particularly evident in corporatist welfare states, where multiple organizations are involved in social policy implementation. This research provides a comprehensive account of how to study institutional work within different organizational settings – bureaucracies, civil society organizations, and religious organizations. Adopting an institutional logics perspective, I focus on how social workers use language to verbally maintain, create, or disrupt the institutional logics that structure their organizations. I report findings from interviews with social workers implementing morality policies, which illustrate how they navigate the institutional values of their organizations in relation to their own values and identities. The paper links street-level research to institutionalism, showing how institutional work manifests on the ground.