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J. Towne-Roese Thesis.pdf (517.97 KB)

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

Towne-Roese, Jackuelyn K
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1365768627

Abstract Details

2013, MA, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Sociology and Criminology.
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.
Tiffany Taylor (Committee Chair)
David Purcell (Committee Member)
Kathryn Feltey (Committee Member)
Social Work; Sociology
Bureaucracy; Identity; Organizations; Welfare; Social Services

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Citations

  • Towne-Roese, J. K. (2013). The Self-Sufficiency Ideology: The Bureaucratic Constraints on Manager Identity that Shape Manager Perceptions of the Welfare-to-Work Program in North Carolina. [Master's thesis, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1365768627

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Towne-Roese, Jackuelyn. The Self-Sufficiency Ideology: The Bureaucratic Constraints on Manager Identity that Shape Manager Perceptions of the Welfare-to-Work Program in North Carolina. 2013. Kent State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1365768627.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Towne-Roese, Jackuelyn. "The Self-Sufficiency Ideology: The Bureaucratic Constraints on Manager Identity that Shape Manager Perceptions of the Welfare-to-Work Program in North Carolina." Master's thesis, Kent State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1365768627

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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© 2013, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.
Release 3.2.12