It has been more than 10 years since the national basic living security system, a representative public assistance in Korea, has been enacted. But, there are some voices in criticizing the effects of the system and issues of the enactment and demandin...
It has been more than 10 years since the national basic living security system, a representative public assistance in Korea, has been enacted. But, there are some voices in criticizing the effects of the system and issues of the enactment and demanding the improvement of the system.
Up to now, the studies on the national basis living security areas have been performed in diversified ways. But, most studies focused on the system itself such as the selection standard of beneficiaries and the unreality, and on the satisfaction with the system. As a result, the alternatives were only macroscopic approaches like the revision of the system. Despite the ceaseless efforts to improve the system, however, the alternatives failed to reflect the job characteristics at the job site and to narrow the gap between policy decision and execution. Therefore, this study was intended to identify the importance of the process of policy execution, which is the link between policy commitment and policy output as an executer of the national basic living security system, and at the same time to analyze the correlation between the work environment and the work attitudes in the process of policy execution. The results of the study is aimed at reestablishing the importance of working-lever employees in improving future national basic living security system and delivery system, and at the same time being utilized as a material to reflect their job characteristics.
On the basis of the study purposes, the results of this study focusing on the work environment and job characteristics of working-level employees can be summarized as follows.
Under the current social welfare delivery system, the policy on the national basic living security system is executed through the front-end employees who directly contact the beneficiaries. Accordingly, it implies that the work environment and work attitudes of relevant employees are essential to achieve the efficient goals of the policy. Therefore, this researcher investigated the correlation between the work environment and work attitudes of working-level employees on the ground of Michael Lipsky's street-level bureaucracy model.
In this study, the in-depth interview and direct observation were conducted on 8 employees who were in charge of the national basic living security system at a residential center located at Y, Gyeonggido. First, the preliminary survey on the public servants in charge of social welfare at the residential center was performed, and then the in-depth interview and direct observation were conducted. For the in-depth interview, the semi-structured questionnaire was used, and all interview contents were recorded and then analyzed. Based on the analysis, the specific attitudes of the study subjects were understood.
The main issues drawn from this study are presented as follows.
The working-level employees were faced with various difficulties, such as lack of resources, excessive workload, threat and challenge to authority, obscure and conflict expectations, utilization of discretionary power, influence of mass media, and isolation in the decision-making process. The relevant employees who faced the work environment showed such work attitudes as customization, normalization, simplification, limitations of demands, a weakening will for improvement.
The comprehensive results from this study are presented as follows.
Compared to the excessive workloads of the working-level employes, they faced the chronical lack of resources. Under the circumstance, the working-level employees used a counter method to maximize the insufficient resources and perform their work. For more details, the relevant employees secured some time to perform the excessive workloads, such as lessening of their business trips to prepare official documents or process the requests of the public coming to the center, consulting with the public in a businesslike or restricted way. In addition, since their works were quite obscure and complex in terms of the job characteristic, they reestablished the concept of works on their own, and then simplified them to make a process quickly and efficiently. Moreover, they spent their energy in normalized work, but took an passive attitude in processing other works by reason of excessive workloads and occurrence of public resentment. The relevant employees made efforts to improve their poor work environment and unrealistic regulations, yet, since they experienced repeated failures of the trials, their will to improve the current environment has considerably been weakened.