Triadic Advocacy Work
Name
orsc.2022.1588.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.98 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
de86c1af30f44dd15c371b5278467472
Author(s)
Jackson, Summer Rachel
Kellogg, Katherine Cissel
Date Issued
April 1, 2022
Journal
Organization Science
Publisher
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
Citation
Jackson, Summer Rachel and Kellogg, Katherine Cissel. 2022. "Triadic Advocacy Work." Organization Science.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Scholars of street-level bureaucracy and institutional research focus primarily on the relationships between advocates and their larger bureaucratic and social systems, assuming that advocates have little need to satisfy their beneficiaries. We find otherwise in our two-year ethnographic study of public defenders advocating for disadvantaged clients in interactions with district attorneys. In our analysis of 82 advocacy opportunities, we demonstrate that, when existing bureaucratic and social systems put beneficiaries at a disadvantage, advocates may be concerned about managing fraught relationships with their beneficiaries in addition to navigating barriers within the bureaucratic and social systems. We further show a tension between the two; ironically, engaging in advocacy work on behalf of beneficiaries can lead to beneficiary mistrust. As a result, advocates engage in triadic advocacy work—managing impressions with their beneficiaries while also influencing powerful actors within the system on behalf of these same beneficiaries. Understanding the process by which advocates navigate this tension is critical to understanding beneficiary outcomes. By reconceptualizing advocacy work as a triadic process among advocate, bureaucratic system, and beneficiary rather than as a dyadic process between advocate and bureaucratic system, this paper develops new theory about how advocates can attempt to garner benefits that advance the rights and opportunities of the disadvantaged.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1588
