TY - JOUR
T1 - Street-level bureaucrats’ cognitive coping during public service delivery
T2 - a systematic literature review
AU - Edri-Peer, Ofek
AU - Cohen, Nissim
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2026
Y1 - 2026
N2 - How do street-level bureaucrats cope cognitively with the demands of service delivery? What factors shape these coping strategies, and how are they reflected in their behaviours? Based on a systematic review of 129 studies, we show that street-level bureaucrats engage in sense-making and adopt cognitive coping mechanisms such as empathy, compassion, cynical reasoning, emotional detachment, carefulness, categorization, ‘othering’, and moral licencing. These are linked to behavioural responses like rationing and aggression, and are shaped mainly by personal factors. This review contributes to the literature by employing a sense-making lens to examine cognitive coping mechanisms, their antecedents, and their behavioural outcomes.
AB - How do street-level bureaucrats cope cognitively with the demands of service delivery? What factors shape these coping strategies, and how are they reflected in their behaviours? Based on a systematic review of 129 studies, we show that street-level bureaucrats engage in sense-making and adopt cognitive coping mechanisms such as empathy, compassion, cynical reasoning, emotional detachment, carefulness, categorization, ‘othering’, and moral licencing. These are linked to behavioural responses like rationing and aggression, and are shaped mainly by personal factors. This review contributes to the literature by employing a sense-making lens to examine cognitive coping mechanisms, their antecedents, and their behavioural outcomes.
KW - cognitive coping
KW - coping mechanisms
KW - sense-making
KW - street-level bureaucrats
KW - Systematic literature review
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105028389557
U2 - 10.1080/14719037.2026.2620549
DO - 10.1080/14719037.2026.2620549
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:105028389557
SN - 1471-9037
JO - Public Management Review
JF - Public Management Review
ER -