Voluntary sector and non-profit studies require theoretical frameworks facilitating better understandings of what occurs on the ground. Following Lipsky’s (Street-level bureaucracy: dilemmas of the individual in public service, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1980) formulation of street-level bureaucracies, scholars have emphasized workplace hierarchies, reproducing dichotomous ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ conceptualizations of practice which can obscure the full complexity of practitioners’ workplace relationships. In this paper, we offer a thematic model of (collective) action that centres the ‘division of labour’ across, and relations between, professional niches that are differentiated by their ‘helping’ orientations, workplace tasks, and responsibilities to service users rather than their organizational status or salaries. We mobilize qualitative research undertaken in the penal voluntary sectors of Canada and England to highlight the mutually constitutive efforts of frontline and management work with criminalized service users. Drawing on and extending Alinsky’s ‘river dilemma’, we conceptualize practice in the (penal) voluntary sector as organized according to the differing choices practitioners make about whom to ‘help’ and how to intervene, which have consequences for social policy, service delivery, and advocacy work.

中文翻译：

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（刑事）志愿部门的从业者利基：来自管理层和前线的观点

志愿部门和非营利性研究需要有利于更好地理解实地情况的理论框架。遵循利普斯基（街头官僚机构：公共服务中个人的困境，罗素塞奇基金会，纽约，1980 年）对街头官僚机构的表述，学者们强调了工作场所的等级制度，再现了“自上而下”和“自下而上”的二分法' 实践的概念化可以掩盖从业者工作场所关系的全部复杂性。在本文中，我们提供了一个（集体）行动的主题模型，该模型将“分工”和专业利基之间的关系集中在这些专业利基之间，这些利基因他们的“帮助”取向、工作场所任务和对服务用户的责任而不是他们的组织地位或薪水。我们动员在加拿大和英国的刑事志愿部门进行的定性研究，以突出前线和管理工作与犯罪服务用户的相互构成性努力。借鉴并扩展阿林斯基的“河流困境”，我们将（刑事）志愿部门的实践概念化为根据从业者对“帮助”谁以及如何干预做出的不同选择而组织的，这对社会政策、服务提供、和宣传工作。