Toward
a Theory of Loosely Coupled Systems: The
Implementation of Federal Youth Employment Policies
Elizabeth Anne
VanderPutten
INTRODUCTION
In all social systems, no matter how rigidly
controlled, a certain amount of "slippage"
occurs between the intentions of decision-makers
and the outputs of decision-implementers. Even
armies -- sometimes among the more disciplined of
organizations -- have been observed to experience
this phenomenon. Not all privates always behave
exactly as their generals might wish. To some
extent, slippage exists at most levels of nearly
all organizations. Why it occurs is the subject
of a large body of research literature; indeed,
slippage seems to be one of the central problems
in organizational theory.
Slippage between federal social policy goals
and outputs has been examined in numerous studies.
Among these are works concerned with the
congressional policy-making process that often
results in vague and sometimes conflicting goals.
Other studies explain slippage, in part, as the
result of the processes by which general laws are
translated into specific programs by Executive
Branch officials. Other studies have explained
slippage in terms of the loosely coupled nature
of the system within which policies are
implemented. Finally, implementation research has
sought to explain slippage in terms of local
level staff. Together, these studies suggest that
the staff of social service agencies charged with
implementing federal policies have considerable
discretion in terms of what services or outputs
to deliver and at what level.
This work seeks to expand knowledge of
slippage by exploring policy outputs and, in turn,
slippage, in terms of a hypothesis involving
individual subgoals that was advanced by the
Nobel Laureate, Herbert A. Simon. In loosely
coupled systems, goals and intended outcomes are
often broad, ill defined and vague. In such
systems, Simon observed, street- level
implementers typically have no objective ways to
tie individual actions to broad end goals. In
such cases, he suggested, the subgoals of the
individual may have a strong influence on the
actions of frontline workers.
Examined in this work are a series of
ethnographic case studies involving an education
and work-related youth program funded by the
Department of Labor in 1978. While various types
of factors influenced final outputs, the analysis
presented here suggests that outputs were the
direct and immediate results of the actions of
individual street-level bureaucrats. The primary
question examined here centers on the
relationships between individually held subgoals
and policy outputs.
While this study focuses on the local
implementation level, it could have implications
for slippage at any level. The administrative
staff, in part because of the globalness of the
policy's wording and in part because of the
loosely coupled nature of the system within which
they work, enjoys considerable leeway in
interpreting the meaning of the policy and
translating that understanding into program rules
and regulations. It seems highly likely that
individually held subgoals may account for part
of their behavior and, therefore, at least part
of the slippage.
Chapter I introduces the concepts
of slippage, loosely coupled systems, and street-level
bureaucrats, and explains their particular
relevance for research on slippage in social
service policy. Chapter II reviews various works
documenting the continuing existence of slippage;
considers a number of different lines of
explanations for slippage; and presents a theory
of individually held subgoals that helps account
for the discrepancies between policy intents and
actual outputs. Chapter III offers a research
design aimed at testing the subgoal hypothesis.
The following chapter presents data from
participant surveys gathered at ten project sites
and analyzes them in terms of high-, medium-, and
low-slippage projects. Chapter V analyzes the
same data in terms of subgoals and outputs, and
Chapter VI analyzes the relationships among
certain concepts, subgoals, and outputs. The
final chapter offers a summary of tentative
findings from this research and suggests a set of
possible implications.
|