Taming the Beast: Managers’ Tactics to Change Frontline Workers’ Adversarial Interaction with Policy Targets

Oliver D. Meza y Carlos Moreno Jaimes

This article explains how manager’s face noncompliance problems with the use of implementation tactics affecting the relational nature between frontline workers and policy targets. In the argument, the concept of bounded rationality is helpful to explain a set of mechanisms that affect individual’s decision-making, although overlooked in some recent streams in the literature by yielding greater importance to rationalistic models of human behaviour. A case study provides the empirical foundation in the effectiveness of the implementation tactics and its underlying rationale. A mixed method approach was used to fulfill the research objectives. Findings support the idea of a set of tactics that managers use to positively engage between frontline workers and citizen in correct(ing) policy implementation gaps.