Expectations and service delivery: Exploring accountability relationships at the street-level

Street-level bureaucracy literature describes service delivery as a result of frontline workers’ coping strategies to adjust rules and regulations to the specific characteristics of the service encounter. Frontline workers’ decision-making is complicated by the presence of sets of expectations, which they are asked to meet Behavioural expectations derive from rules and regulations, managers, peers, and users. The concept of accountability allows the analysis to identify how expectations affect frontline workers’ practices.