Municipal Diverging from “Bureaucracy:” A Case Study of Organizational Image in Housing Services

This article presents a case study of efforts of a workforce development unit within a local public housing authority to recraft its image as separate from the larger housing authority, in order to better attract participants to its optional supportive services. Using qualitative interview data with Section 8 voucher recipients and public housing authority staff, and descriptive quantitative data from a larger dataset, and drawing on theories of street-level bureaucracies and agency-client interactions, the case study finds that service recipients perceive the housing authority as a largely compliance-oriented organization that is overly bureaucratic, excessively regulating of private spheres of family life, and highly punitive. In order to attract participants to its optional supportive services, the workforce development unit recrafted its organizational identity and its external image through spatial relocation, rebranding, reallocation of workload among staff, and program redesign. The result is a workforce development unit that is highly valued and attractive to service participants, and that service seekers view as distinct from the housing authority within which the unit resides

Motivations and Implications of Community Service Provision by La Familia Michoacána / Knights Templar and other Mexican Drug Cartels

Research demonstrates that service provision by violent organizations can be an effective strategy for coercing the local community to accept and conceal a group’s violent activities, and for creating loyalty to these groups. This has been most frequently explored among political organizations such as terrorist groups, with organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas very visibly engaged in providing social welfare in addition to their violent activities. Recent reports indicate that criminal organizations in Mexico also are involved in instances of public service provision in local communities. This article explores the extent to which drug cartels operating in Mexico are involved in public service provision to members of communities where they operate, and considers possible motivations and implications for public service provision by these criminal organizations, with specific attention to the organization La Familia Michoacána/ Knights Templar. The article also gives attention to the consequences to citizenship and government of service provision by violent nonstate actors, and the ways such service provision may disrupt the social contract between the citizen and the state

The Shifting Moralities of Mobile Phones in Lau Communicative Ecologies (Solomon Islands)

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