Appraisal of the Discretion of Street-Level Leaders in China through the Lens of Leadership Theory

Abstract

Chinas street-level workers are irreplaceable and essential in providing public service for citizens well-beings and national governance system development while there are surprisingly increasing misuse of discretion by street-level workers impairing public interests, crippling governments authority and impeding service-oriented government transition. Lots of efforts from both theories and practice have been spent trying to figure out this urgent issue but mostly failed. So the main question is why these efforts failed? This article argues that it is because the role of street-level workers and the nature of discretion are not comprehensively understood. Hence, in order to solve the issue of street-level workers misbehavior, it is necessary to reunderstand the role and discretion of street-level workers from the aspect of leadership theory as an important supplementary viewpoint.