How Do Frontline Civil Servants Engage the Public? Practices, Embedded Agency, and Bricolage

Civil servants in local government are increasingly expected to engage and collaborate with citizens stakeholders. This article takes a practice approach develop generic picture of everyday work at the front lines public engagement, highlighting relational improvisational aspects that that, date, have remained understudied. Our data analyses build on existing literature contribute it by describing five specific practices civil servants. Based our in-depth interviews 45 frontline Netherlands, we found try bring together range different interests, values, perspectives, resources understanding situation, building rapport trust, developing shared resolutions, aligning processes “outside” “inside” city hall, supporting practically. Furthermore, substantiate idea workers entail embedded agency, which specifically label as bricolage. We demonstrate how agency is constrained enabled bureaucracy its policies, seek alignment possibilities resolutions.