Security networks and occupational culture: understanding culture within and between organisations

Abstract

Security networks are organisational forms involving public, private and hybrid actors or nodes that work together to pursue security-related objectives. While we know that security networks are central to the governance of security, and that security networks exist at multiple levels across the security field, we still do not know enough about how these networks form and function. Based on a detailed qualitative study of networks in the field of ‘high’ policing in Australia, this article aims to advance our knowledge of the relational properties of security networks. Following the organisational culture literature, the article uses the concept of a ‘group’ as the basis with which to analyse and understand culture. A group can apply to networks (‘network culture’), organisations (‘organisational culture’) and sections within and between organisations (‘occupational subcultures’). Using interviews with senior members of security, police and intelligence agencies, the article proceeds to analyse how cultures form and function within such groups. In developing a network perspective on occupational culture, the article challenges much of the police culture(s) literature for concentrating too heavily on police organisations as independent units of analysis. The article moves beyond debates between integrated or differentiated organisational cultures and questions concerning the extent to which culture shapes particular outcomes, to analyse the ways in which security nodes relate to one another in security networks. If there is one thing that should be clear it is that security nodes experience cultural change as they work together in and through networks.

Keywords:

• security network
• police culture
• occupational culture
• organisational culture
• subcultures

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their thorough and constructive comments on an earlier version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. A third is known as the ‘fragmentation’ perspective (Martin 2002). This position asserts that organisational cultures are generally too ambiguous and diverse for researchers, and indeed organisational participants, to be able to understand organisational culture as a meaningful construct.

2. Agency roles and responsibilities in the context of this article can be understood as follows: the Australian Federal Police is responsible for national law enforcement (being Australia’s only national police organisation); the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service is generally responsible for national border security; the Office of Transport Security is responsible for security planning and regulation of national transport systems (aviation and maritime – surface transport is a function of state and territory police); Emergency Management Australia is responsible for national counter-terrorism arrangements at an operational level; and the National Security and International Policy division of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet is responsible for national counter-terrorism arrangements at a policy level.

3. Other terms of the research agreements included: (1) that data would not be published for a minimum of 24 months following final collection due to potential security concerns; and (2) that the following caveat is stated: it is the personal views of interviewees which are quoted and that these views do not necessarily represent their respective organisations.

4. The interviewee is referring to bodies like the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre in Canada; Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre in the UK; and the National Counterterrorism Centre in the USA.

5. The interviewee is referring here to the debate between merging the Australian Federal Police and Australian Security Intelligence Organisation into a single agency similar to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the USA. The interviewee expresses the view that the agencies should remain separate.

6. The Australian Federal Police are contracted to provide community policing services to the Australian Capital Territory similar to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in many provinces of Canada. The interviewee here is therefore referring to the Australian Federal Police as not serving a ‘traditional’ police role. State police have in the past often viewed the federal police as not ‘real’ police though the last decade or more has seen state and federal police work together on an increasing number of criminal offence categories, resulting in closer (but definitely not seamless) relationships between them.