Hester Paanakker

First, the focus on value convergence in this thesis concerns the question of how, in the specific context of street-level penal craftsmanship, the value approaches of street-level workers compare to each other, and how they compare with the value approaches of their immediate superiors, senior managers, and officials at policy making level. Do they all consider the frontline craft alike? As the chapters in this thesis will explain, value convergence is conceptualized as “the degree to which, throughout the professional domain, public values are similarly or differently identified, understood, and prioritized or enacted in practice.” This includes both espoused values (how values are formulated as ideal and aspirational principles) and enacted values (how values are emphasized in actual practice) (Schein, 2004; Van der Wal, 2008). When taking into account the different public sector levels that the thesis compares, and the spectrum of convergence implied in this definition, it follows that value convergence refers to the perceived similarity of value approaches held by policy advisors, organizational managers and street-level professionals in the sector, whereas value divergence refers to the perceived misfit or incongruence between the value approaches of policy advisors, organizational mangers, and street-level professionals in the sector. Although this explores a new field of public values research, we may find several leads from related fields of study that hint upon value convergence or divergence. These insights, however, do not provide an unambiguous image. For instance, social learning and organizational socialization theory suggests that, at organizational level, employees, especially in smaller sub- groups, are socialized into organizational group norms and values (Bandura, 1977, 1986; Chao, O'Leary-Kelly, Wolf, Klein, & Gardner, 1994; Kjeldsen, 2014; Kohlberg, 1969; Moyson et al., 2018; Paarlberg & Perry, 2007). This suggests a high level of value convergence within organizations, at least on broader organizational values, which do not necessarily equate to craft in public service delivery. In the public sector, strong socialization is presumed also to apply to the context of public professions that are guided by strong professional principles and a dominant common professional logic (L. B. Andersen et al., 2012; L. B. Andersen & Pedersen, 2012; Freidson, 2001; Teodoro, 2014). This would suggest a potentially high level of value convergence, not necessarily within the organization but inter-organizationally between street- level workers that have the same profession. Indeed, Van Steden, Van der Wal, and Lasthuizen (2015) found that employees in street-level policing convergently identified and comprehended values in the professional context of their public service delivery, indicating street-level officials may have rather homogenous value preferences. 17 Introduction