Foucault's techniques of power in street-level organizations

This study uses Foucault's (1979, 1983, 1995) theoretical work as a guide in examining relation of power and resistance within the unique context of street-level bureaucracies (Lipsky, 1980). It explores relationships by asking how employees and managers are objectified within street level organizations, if there are any similarities in objectifications across organizations providing different government services, and how these objectifications intersect within relations of power and resistance. As an artifact of the relations of power between street-level bureaucrats and managers, ten purposively selected collectively bargained contract documents from public organizations in Florida are analyzed in this research. Ethnographic Content Analysis (Altheide, 1996) was used to study the collective bargaining agreements selected, with phrases from the documents serving as the unit of analysis. Using Foucault's (1979, 1983a, 1995) descriptions of techniques of power as a guide, four specific protocol matrices were developed, tested and then used to collect and code phrases as illustrative of one or more techniques of power. The results of the analysis are first summarized using displays and matrices. Then, rich illustrations from the data is are discussed in detail, using Foucault's categories of normalization, individualization, panopticism and pastoralism as a framework for presentation. Results of this research demonstrate that, in the collective bargaining agreements analyzed, both 'managers' and 'employees' are objectified in ways that were similar across all of the documents studied. Through techniques of power as theorized by Foucault, 'managers', 'employees', and 'union representatives' are produced, but also constrained as well. The collective bargaining agreements in this analysis serve to 'fix' relationships between these two objectifications that are discursively affirmed as unequal. Constrained by this 'reality', any potential for changing relationships between managers and employees through prescriptions that ask street-level bureaucrats to be 'leaders'; "responsible choice-makers" (Vinzant & Crothers, 1998, p. 154) rather than policy implementers simply carrying out management directives are largely futile. As persuasive as these ideas might be, within the context of this project it is impossible to think of employees in terms of 'leader', given the objectifications of 'employee' and 'manager' found in the documents analyzed.