Policy Adoption and the Redefinition of Operating Procedures: Comparison Cases at UMTA

Abstract

Political scientists often consider the place of standard operating procedures (SOPS) in shaping bureaucratic responsiveness to “top‐down” direction, but our writing only infrequently considers the processes and ease by which bureaucratic routines, decision standards, and SOPS adjust to produce nm outputs. This article explores the change of routines, decision standards, and SOPs from a behavioral perspective to portray bureaucratic behavior and policy as something other than a static function of extant SOPs or a fully and fluidly malleable function of internal preferences and external incentives. In particular, the role of two organizationally “bottom‐up” factors — careerists' policy approval and their policy‐relevant working schema — are explored to suggest how readily “top‐down” preferences for policy translate into pragmatic working arrangements. The empirical basis for the article is a structured set of cases in the Urban Mass Transportation Administration through the latter 1970s and early 1980s.

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