“The Right Way, the Wrong Way, and the Blueville Way”: Standards and Cultural Match in the Police Organization

ABSTRACT

This article examines how actors within an organization draw meaning from their local setting in ways that ultimately hinder institutional efforts toward standardization. Using a case study of a public sector organization that is inundated with standards—a police department—this analysis develops a standards-as-culture lens to show how local conditions inform the cultural resources police officers deploy. It is argued that individuals connect features of their community with repertoires of uniqueness—what they call “the Blueville Way”—to perform, justify, and sustain a sense of nonconformity with political measures meant to standardize the provision of policing services. Data for this study include 100 interviews and field notes gathered over an 18 month period spent with a police department in headquarters, patrol cars, and the streets. This article contributes an account of the significance of “cultural match” in law enforcement: perceptions and practices are driven by the socioeconomic context in which an organization is embedded, thereby impeding full compliance with industry standards that are deemed locally incompatible.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural match
• culture
• local context
• organizations
• policing
• standards

Notes

1. See Paoline (2003) for a comprehensive overview of the literature on police culture.

2. An instrumental case study uses a single case to gain insights into a particular phenomenon, where there is also an explicit expectation that the learning be used to refine a theory or conceptual lens (Stake 1995).

3. As Reiss (1971) warns, researchers must be cautious of sample selection by police organization members, who may choose respondents that offer a favorable impression. Impression management was not apparent with this portion of the sample because many shared views and experiences that boldly discredit the department. While crucial to early stages of recruitment, the staff sergeant’s role diminished as members became increasingly familiar with the researcher’s presence. Control in selecting respondents also increased by collecting referrals from participants, thereby expanding the pool of individuals the staff sergeant was instructed to contact for future interviews.

4. Names of officers, as well as those of the city and police service, are changed. Anonymity is maintained for two reasons: the police department preferred this to be the case, and, more importantly, a requirement was set by a Research Ethics Board to protect the identities of senior rank officers who—given the small numbers at the top of the hierarchy—may be identifiable.

5. Statistics Canada (2017) reported that Blueville’s Crime Severity Index (CSI) is slightly below the Canadian national average of 71. The CSI accounts for both the amount of crime reported by police in a given jurisdiction and the relative seriousness of these crimes.

6. Variation in the nature of police-citizen interaction at the neighborhood level cannot be confidently empirically gauged from just 50 hours of observation on the streets, in homes, and in businesses of Blueville.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (752-2012-2099-A28).