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

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.