Introduction to the special issue on police organizations

Nearly two centuries ago, the British Parliament established the legal basis for the London Metropolitan Police Department by passing the Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 (Klockars 1985; Uchida 1997). The department’s first commissioners, Charles Rowan and Richard Mayne, faced the extensive task of creating an operational body capable of preventing crime. They decided on what would become historically critical matters such as uniforms, equipment, guiding principles, and the division of labor. According to Critchley’s history of the London police (1967),

It was decided to divide the Metropolitan district into seventeen police divisions each containing 165 men, making a grand total of nearly 3,000 … Each division was to be put in charge of an officer entitled ‘superintendent,’ under whom were to be four inspectors and sixteen sergeants … Each sergeant had control of nine constables (51).

Interestingly, the choice to structure the ‘New Police’ geographically (referred to as spatial complexity today) and to organize it vertically (referred to as vertical or hierarchical complexity) was done so without the benefit of a science of organizations. For most of the 1800s, the very period when police agencies were emerging in cities in England, the United States, and elsewhere, writers focused primarily on the challenges associated with industrialization such as labor shortages and the lack of skilled workers (Wren 1972). Two centuries later, the story is quite different. As the articles in this special issue show, not only has a field of organizational theory and behavior developed, the organization itself has also emerged as a critical focal point in policing research.

The roots of organizational theory and behavior are often traced back to three scholars writing around the turn of the twentieth century in different parts of the world, Frederick Taylor (1913), Max Weber (1946), and Henri Fayol (1949).¹ Through discussions of scientific management, bureaucracy, and administrative management, respectively, they offered prescriptions for the best way to structure and supervise work. Gulick (1937, 1) referred to these collective principles as a ‘theory of organization.’ Just 15 years later, noted organizations scholar Herbert Simon (1952) offered a much broader definition of ‘organization theory,’ including not only the structural features of organizations but also internal processes such as power, decision-making, motivation, and culture (1132–1139; see also Starbuck 2003).

Since mid-century, however, organization scholars have adopted a more precise nomenclature to identify particular study areas (Starbuck 2003). Organizational theory refers to the body of literature addressing the organization as a whole – a macro-level approach (Porter, Lawler, and Hackman 1975; Scott and Davis 2007; Tompkins 2005). Organizational theory researchers typically examine and explain variation across organizations and study interrelationships between agencies. For instance, do agency structural characteristics affect department-level use of force rates (Smith 2004; Willits and Nowacki 2014)? Why is innovation likely to occur in some departments more than others (Morabito 2008; Skogan and Hartnett 2005; Weisburd and Lum 2005)? In contrast, organizational behavior focuses on the individual within the organizational context, or a micro-level approach (Porter, Lawler, and Hackman 1975). Organizational behavioral researchers examine the informal organization, workgroups, and culture as well as the effects of the organization on individual behavior, values, and attitudes. Do officers accept new reforms (Morabito, Watson, and Draine 2013)? How can the organization encourage officers to engage in certain behaviors (Johnson 2009, 2010; Mastrofski, Ritti, and Snipes 1994).

After successfully proposing the idea of a special issue on police organizations to the Journal of Crime and Justice’s editor, Mike Leiber, we approached scholars in the field who had done or were doing organizational theory or behavioral research across levels of analysis: the industry, the department, or the individual. The empirical research in this area also covers various units of analysis: states, counties, cities, organizations, census blocks, and within and across individuals. The articles in this special issue provide variation across the level and units of analysis and showcase how theory can be used to explain structures, operations, and behaviors within police organizations. The papers in this issue are organized roughly by the level of analysis from industry to the individual.

The study by Matthew Matusiak, William King, and Edward Maguire focused on how the larger institutional sphere affects police chiefs’ priorities in Texas. The authors used institutional theory to explain variation across three agency priorities: preserving law and order, maintaining relationships with constituents, and adopting policy or tactical innovations. Using structural equation modeling to measure the influence of various institutional sectors (e.g., national media, local emergency medical organizations, and police employee associations), they then modeled the impact of those sectors along with controls on the chiefs’ priorities. They found support for institutional theory in that ‘perceptions of all seven institutional sectors had a significant effect on at least one measure of organizational priorities.’ Matusiak et al. strengthened the institutional theory scaffolding that has routinely found industry-level factors do influence policing. While more empirical work must be done to test institutional theory, especially measurement of key concepts, there is a growing consensus among the extant research in support of institutional pressures affecting law enforcement decision-making.

Melissa Morabito, April Pattavina, and Linda Williams used organizational indicators and situational factors to predict arrest and clearance of sexual assault cases in 152 police departments. Specifically, they hypothesized those departments with a workforce more representative of women in the community will have higher arrest and clearance rates for sexual assault cases. Using representational bureaucracy theory, they failed to find support for direct effects for female representativeness, but speculated a tipping point has yet to be reached that would show an effect.

In the study by Thomas Holt, Kristie Blevins, and Ruth Waddell Smith, the work stress and job satisfaction of forensic scientists was considered in light of individual and organizational factors. Their research question was whether scientists working for and in law enforcement agencies feel any undue stress or low satisfaction given the independent nature of scientific work in a more structured criminal justice system. The organizational factors they looked at include overtime, management support, and relationships with prosecutors. Building on research on the stress and satisfaction of law enforcement officers, this study found that an organizational misfit can lead to higher stress, namely working longer hours, having a poor working relationship with a courtroom workgroup, low manager support, and role ambiguity.

Natalie Kroovand Hipple, Edmund McGarrell, Mallory O’Brien, and Beth Huebner examined problem-solving policing at the organizational level across four agencies. Specifically, the authors looked at gun-crime incident reviews in the police departments of Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and St. Louis. By examining the incident review process in four separate sites, the authors could understand how organizational-level differences affected the development of the review process.

Michael Kyle and David White looked at police officer buy-in for the use of body-worn cameras. This technical innovation has been rapidly adopted in part because of the current focus on officer-involved shootings of citizens. The authors examined how officers view camera implementation given their perceptions of organizational justice. They hypothesized that the concept of organizational justice (composed of procedural justice, interpersonal justice, and informational justice) will be a strong predictor of officer support for body-worn camera implementation. Specifically, when department leadership explains the need and value of the technology and involves officers in the process, officers may be less fearful of the consequences and trust the organization is considerate of their concerns. Kyle and White found that organizational justice is a significant predictor of positive attitudes toward body-worn camera implementation.

In ‘Understanding the culture of craft: Lessons from two police agencies,’ James Willis and Stephen Mastrofski revisited the concept of police subculture. Officers in their study rated various aspects of the craft of policing, including views of top performing officers, causes of undesirable results of police-citizen interactions, and perceptions of skill and knowledge in promotion. Based on their findings, the authors argued for a ‘more textured assessment of police culture,’ specifically on how officers view the various way in which they do their work (or the craft culture). This view diverges from scholarship on policing culture focusing on negative police traits such as machismo, authoritarianism, and cynicism. Their research should direct policy-makers, especially policy derived from scientific best practices, to consider how line officers would view the efficacy of policy from a practical point of view.

The articles in this special issue consider police organizations and their behavior, as well as the behavior of individuals situated within police organizations. The current controversies surrounding policing and police organizations illuminate the importance of scholarship, policies, and practices that address both the individual and the organizational level within the profession. While much attention and discourse has focused on police officers and the decisions they make as individuals (i.e., to use force, to make an arrest, or to grant a citizen’s request for service or intervention), it is imperative to recognize that officers are positioned within organizations. Officers act as independent agents, yet they do so within the structure, policies, training, culture, tradition, and context of their employing organizations. While the influence of police organizations on personnel is not infinite, it is also not infinitesimal (Mastrofski and Ritti 1992).

Efforts to enhance, improve, or reform policing need to consider the reciprocal relationship between organizations and individuals. Providing police organizations with improved equipment, for example, is likely to be of limited efficacy if personnel are not trained on the proper use of that equipment and then held accountable for its application within relevant policies and contexts. Providing police officers with training on a new patrolling strategy is unlikely to yield optimal results if requisite changes to staffing and deployment are not also made within the organization. Major efforts to reform policing often focus on modifications to police organizations, while corresponding changes in police personnel and their behaviors are implied but less directly addressed in a prescriptive fashion (i.e., President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing’s 2015).

Analogously, policing scholars need to continue to examine organizations, individuals, and their interplay in understanding the behavior and decision-making of each. Community policing represents a prime example of this situation. Studies of police organizations suggested community policing was being commonly adopted in the US during the 1990s (Zhao, Lovrich, and Thurman 1999). Yet studies often found limited evidence as to the penetration of this policing approach and its ability to demonstrate purported outcomes (Zhao, Lovrich, and Robinson 2001). Was the problem the organizations or the individuals? Was the problem giving people enough training and acculturation to win hearts and minds, or was the problem a failure of organizations to change culture, structure, supervision, and organizational practice in the right ways? Were the limitations of community policing a product of an inherently flawed idea, recalcitrant police officers, organizations that failed to recognize the approach required changes at the organizational level, or some combination of these problems?

If the academic and policy-making community wishes to see more advances in the policing profession, police organizations and leaders need to be guided by research that drills deeper into the complex milieu of the interplay between individuals and the organizations within which they are situated. More research into organizations, organizational theory, and the diffusion of innovative practices are key elements of meeting this need. Initiatives intended to advance the profession must be formulated and pursued with a greater understanding of the behavior of organizations and individuals. While the recent decades have born witness to advances in the understanding of police organizations, and while the articles included in this special issue build that base of knowledge, there remains work for the academic community.

George W. Burruss
Department of Criminology, University of South Florida
[email protected]
Matthew J. Giblin and Joseph A. Schafer
Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Notes

1. Although writing contemporaneously, key organizational works by Weber and Fayol would not be translated into English until the mid-twentieth century (Wren 1972).