Hester Paanakker

enforcing instrumental values that support the organization over intrinsic values of good public service delivery forms the ideal breeding ground for negative value stereotypes, and indeed, they run rampant, and strengthen the experience of all types of implemenatation problems at the frontline. It is a wake-up call to acknowledge that their expression of intrinsic values does not reach the frontline shop floor sufficiently. Or even the level of the prison director, for that matter. Policy makers may need to realize there is a lot of goodwill and commitment to penal values that serve detainees among street-level workers, and even significant adaptive capacity and resilience to deal with the challenges presented by reform and cutbacks, but this is not endless. Failure to close or narrow this perceived value gap further exacerbates hostile and toxic relationships throughout the organization and thwarts policy implementation and organizational coherence. At the same time, this thesis may give insight to street-level workers that their perception of value divergence might be overstated, identifying common ground for frontline workers to level with their superiors, and to put forward their concerns and the challenges they face in making key values work. Speaking up and openly discussing value doubts and problems is required: turning a blind eye and pretending it is not there will not do. It may also give street-level workers in the penal services trust and confidence if they see the commonality in craftsmanship perspectives among their direct colleagues and how they experience them in the challenges they face. This is a recognition of their nature as craftsmen and women and the great lengths they go to in trying to safeguard the quality of their service delivery. However, an important issue remains in that they do not feel this recognition, something that further contributes to the perceived value divergence and the perception of its negative effects at the frontline. To mitigate the rough edges of value divergence and the perverse effects it creates, policy makers and public managers have an important role to play in value acknowledgment and communication. Ideally, they should address the root problem of implementation levels not seeing or recognizing how intrinsic public service values are layed down in policy tools, systems, and instruments. Where there is a verifyable mismatch between the institutional policies and the safeguarding of values, open discussion and shared deliberation need to take 177 Conclusions and Discussion