PhD defence L.M. (Liesbeth) Faas

Below is a brief summary of the dissertation:

Lisa stands at her caseworker's desk in tears. Next week she will be evicted, and her three children risk being taken from her. Not because she is a bad mother, but because standard procedures do not fit her situation. What do you come up with as a frontline professional?

This thesis examines which factors enable or constrain creative discretion among professionals in Dutch neighbourhood teams. Creative discretion is defined as generating novel and useful ideas for tailoring service delivery to the needs of citizens, supervisors and professionals themselves. Four studies combined interviews, a thirteen-week diary study and a vignette survey.

Collegial support emerges as the most important enabling factor. Professionals value colleagues above all as thinking partners: brainstorming together and sharing tips from comparable cases. Leadership matters too, where supervisors offer trust and backing. Work pressure is the most common constraint, because it consumes the cognitive space that creative problem solving requires. Strikingly, bureaucratic control was considered least important. Not the rules themselves constrain, but uncertainty about what is permitted. Clear boundaries can in fact support creative discretion.

A notable gap emerged between intention and practice. All professionals called creativity essential, yet 48 percent generated new ideas during the study period. Context matters as well: in the co-production between municipalities and neighbourhood teams, financial pressure led to tighter oversight and less room for tailored solutions.

The thesis ends with Lisa as an ordinary mother. The difference was creative discretion, made possible by choices within reach of every team.