An Ethnographer among Street-Level Bureaucrats and New Public Management

Consultable en ligne : http://ideas.repec.org/p/sol/wpaper/2013-132998.htmlInternational audienceAmong the many ways of studying public administration, one orientation among social research has been gradually established: observing bureaucrats at work. Such a perspective can easily have two aims : a better understanding about the crucial role front line employees can play in the daily delivery of public goods, and an empirically mapping of the different public organizations experiencing of new public management measures. With an ethnographic approach based on French Administrations cases and inspired particularly by science and technology studies and workplace studies, this paper focuses on these different points