Contested Endogeneity: Policy interpretation and re-creation in the organizational middle.

This article examines the role of middle managers in public, social control organizations as they affect the process by which organizations conceptualize and disseminate policy reform during periods of top-down organizational change. Using case study data collected during three years of ethnographic fieldwork with parole agents in California, I re-conceptualize Edelman's endogeneity of law argument to the realm of policy reform in a public bureaucracy. I extend Edelman's model to include two critical and often competing internal process: manageralization (Edelman 2004) and unionization. I also expand Grattet and Jenness' (2005) conception of mediators of law positioning middle managers as key policy mediators embodying both the interest of the organization and themselves. My analysis suggests that middle managers fill an often underestimated role between formal and street-level policy. As intermediate repositories of policy-related information they harness significant influence over how policies are understood and implemented by street-level workers. I argue that this distinct group of middle managers uses four social processes: normative, actuarial, coercive and materialist to interpret policy and four specific communication techniques: reinscription, regurgitation, reduction and omission as mechanisms for reconstituting and disseminating policy. This article challenges the long-held belief that street-level bureaucrats are key ground-level policy makers. Instead, the present analysis suggests that street-level bureaucrats are only as autonomous and influential as the information they receive from their superiors gives them license to be. Ultimately, middle managers may represent a critical, yet largely overlooked, barrier to (or potential facilitator of) successful change within organizations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]