Contemporary Research on Police Organizations

George W. Burruss, Matthew J. Giblin, Joseph A. Schafer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138494022
• eBook ISBN: 9781351026765
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Much research on policing focuses on individual officer decision making in the field, but officers are positioned within organizations. Organizational characteristics, including structures, policies, management, training, culture, traditions, and the environmental context affect individual officer behavior and attitudes. Recent high-profile controversies surrounding policing have generated interest in examining what factors may have led to current crises.

In this book, contributors discuss how police department priorities are made; how departments respond to sexual assault complaints; how forensic scientists deal with job stress and satisfaction; how police use gun crime incident reviews for problem solving and information sharing; how police officers view the use of body-worn cameras given their perceptions of organizational justice; and how officers view their work culture. The purpose of this book is to give policy makers and scholars some guidance on the interplay between the individual and the organization. By understanding this dynamic, police administrators should be able to better devise reform efforts. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Crime and Justice.

How perceptions of the institutional environment shape organizational priorities: findings from a survey of police chiefs

Matthew C. Matusiak, William R. King and Edward R. Maguire

ABSTRACT
A long tradition of research has examined the influence of organizational environments on criminal justice agencies. Based on survey data from a sample of local police chiefs, this study explores the effects of the institutional environment on police agency priorities. Specifically, we investigate how the perceived importance of different sectors of the institutional environment influences police agency priorities, as reported by police chiefs. The analyses reveal that certain sectors of the institutional environment exert greater influence on police organizational priorities than others. Moreover, the influence of institutional sectors differs according to the specific type of priority. Our findings reveal that institutional considerations exert more consistent effects on the importance of maintaining relationships with constituents than on maintaining law and order or adopting innovative practices. We draw on institutional theory in explaining the study’s findings.

Introduction

Nearly a half-century ago, Wilson (1968) posited that the behavior of local police agencies was influenced by the structure and culture of local politics. Though now dated, Wilson’s classic study of police agencies in eight cities remains one of the most influential academic works in criminal justice (Maguire and Uchida 2000; Zhao, He, and Lovrich 2006; Zhao, Ren, and Lovrich 2010) and has inspired numerous empirical tests (e.g., Crank 1990; Hassell, Zhao, and Maguire 2003; Langworthy 1985; Liederbach and Travis 2008; Matusiak 2014; Slovak 1986). Wilson’s study was published at a pivotal time in the development of two bodies of research and theory, one focusing on complex organizations and the other on criminal justice. Within the former, older closed-systems models of organizations were being replaced by an open-systems perspective that acknowledged the powerful influence of the environment in which organizations are situated (Lawrence and Lorsch 1967; Thompson 1967). Scholars married this new open-systems perspective on organizations with the growing academic interest in the structures and behaviors of police and other criminal justice agencies (e.g., Clark, Hall, and Hutchinson 1977; Reiss, Jr. and Bordua 1967). Wilson’s study served as the catalyst for generations of subsequent research focused on explaining interagency variations in policing from a variety of theoretical perspectives (e.g., Katz 1997; Katz, Maguire, and Roncek 2002; Langworthy 1985; Matusiak 2013; Smith and Holmes 2003; Stucky 2005; Zhao 1994).

One of the most fruitful areas of research to emerge from the open-systems perspective has been the study of how police organizations are influenced by their institutional environments. As Crank and Langworthy (1992, 341) note, policing occurs ‘in an environment saturated with institutional values.’ The institutional environment is home to a variety of entities with the ability to influence the well-being of police organizations. Crank and Langworthy (1992, 342) emphasize that police agencies derive legitimacy by conforming to ‘institutional expectations of what the appropriate structures and activities for a police department are.’ The study of this aspect of organizational environments is based on institutional theory, which stems from the pioneering work of Meyer and Rowan (1977), DiMaggio and Powell (1983), and other notable organizational scholars. Institutional theory has had a profound influence on organizational scholarship across multiple disciplines. A growing body of scholarship has applied this perspective to understanding the impact of the institutional environment on police organizations (Crank 2003; Crank and Langworthy 1992, 1996; Giblin 2006; Giblin and Burruss 2009; Giblin, Schafer, and Burruss 2009; Katz 2001; Matusiak 2013).

The present study builds on previous applications of institutional theory to the study of police organizations by testing the influence of police chiefs’ perceptions of the institutional environment on agency priorities. We focus on seven sectors of the institutional environment: federal and state law enforcement agencies, national media, local media, police officer associations, elected officials, other criminal justice agencies, and emergency medical service providers. Drawing on survey data from a sample of police chiefs, we estimate a structural equation model that links perceptions of the institutional environment with agency priorities. We begin by providing a brief overview of institutional theory in the study of organizations. We review previous scholarship that has applied institutional theory to the study of policing. Then, we present our data, methods, findings, and conclusions.

Literature review

Institutional theory

According to institutional theory, organizations are heavily influenced by the institutional environments in which they are embedded (Donaldson 1995). The institutional environment for police agencies is comprised of various elements that establish norms and expectations about what a good police agency should look like. Powerful entities in the institutional environment – sometimes referred to as institutional sovereigns – can exert considerable influence over the structures and operations of police organizations. Sovereigns may be local, state, national, or international. They include police professional organizations (such as the International Association of Chiefs of Police), state and national accreditation bodies, state training and certification boards, other criminal justice agencies, and organizations responsible for related functions, such as emergency response. Sovereigns may also include elected officials, the media, community groups, and special interest groups. These entities are important because they are able to confer or withhold legitimacy. Thus, a key aspect of being a skilled leader is learning how to navigate the institutional environment and satisfy the demands of numerous constituencies to preserve legitimacy.

Legitimacy provides an organization with numerous benefits. According to Maguire (2014):

[L]egitimacy helps to establish autonomy, generate additional political and civic support, and maximize the flow of resources. This primal concern with legitimacy also leads police agencies to adopt policies, practices, and structures considered de rigueur in the policing industry. These features may not suit their unique contexts or needs; yet adopting them enables the agency to appear progressive. (87–88)

Organizations in highly institutionalized environments acquire legitimacy by adopting certain signs and symbols of technical proficiency – such as having the right types of programs, policies, or special units – rather than by providing any actual evidence that these structural or operational elements improve performance. This preoccupation with the appearance of being progressive explains, for instance, how a police agency that is not facing a serious gang problem might end up establishing a specialized gang unit (Katz 2001). Legitimacy is built through an interactive process between organizations and their environments (Aldrich 1999; Donaldson 1995). Organizations that are most responsive and most adept at meeting the expectations of their institutional environments (for example, by changing their structure in ways widely believed to be socially acceptable) are granted greater legitimacy and are therefore more likely to gain access to crucial resources. On the other hand, organizations that are deemed unresponsive to their environments may be ‘more vulnerable to claims that they are negligent, irrational, or unnecessary’ (Meyer and Rowan 1977, 349).

Institutional environments are complex and may give rise to competing demands on organizations. Moreover, demands from the institutional environment often conflict with those arising out of concerns with technical proficiency. As a result, organizations in heavily institutionalized environments must find a way to address a mix of competing institutional and technical demands in order to preserve legitimacy, effectiveness, and efficiency. One way organizations can resolve this conflict is by decoupling visible policies and structures from routine operating practices (Meyer and Rowan 1977). In this way, organizations can buffer their technical core (where the majority of the organization’s work gets done) from external pressures imposed by the environment (Thompson 1967). Decoupling enables the core work of the organization to continue undisturbed while more peripheral elements of the organization generate the appearance of being responsive to demands from the institutional environment. The decoupling phenomenon helps explain why so much of what passes as police reform is really just ‘symbolic reform at the edges’ (Maguire, Uchida, and Hassell 2015, 90).¹

Institutional theory in policing

Policing scholars have embraced institutional theory despite formidable challenges in the operationalization and measurement of key concepts (Maguire 2014). Building upon Crank and Langworthy’s (1992) initial application of institutional theory to the police, researchers have explored how police agencies seek to establish legitimacy by adapting to the expectations of key actors or entities in their institutional environments. For example, studies have reported on the legitimacy implications of agencies adopting – or failing to adopt – community-oriented policing (Maguire and Katz 2002; Zhao, Lovrich, and Robinson 2001), Compstat (Willis 2011; Willis and Mastrofski 2011; Willis, Mastrofski, and Weisburd 2007), green policing (Worrall 2010), special units (Katz 2001), and a variety of other phenomena. Overall, police agencies seem to benefit when they adopt innovations that are viewed favorably within certain influential sectors of their institutional environments. Other researchers have addressed the importance of stakeholder perceptions (Maguire and King 2007; Vitale 2005) in determining legitimacy. Responding to public sentiment demonstrates to powerful outside constituents that police organizations are responsive to their concerns (Crank 2003). At the same time, police agencies that are not responsive to concerns or expectations arising from their institutional environments may end up paying a hefty price in terms of lost legitimacy or resources. Taken to the extreme, legitimacy crises can ultimately lead to the disbanding of a police agency, especially for smaller agencies (King 2014).

During the 1990s, police departments in the USA came under considerable pressure to adopt community policing. Many responded by establishing specialized community policing units or positions that left the core work of the agency to continue policing as usual. This enabled police leaders to report that they were doing community policing, thus satisfying demands from their institutional environment without disrupting routine operating practices (Maguire 1997; Zhao, Lovrich, and Robinson 2001). Research on the adoption of community policing in American police departments is consistent with propositions from institutional theory. For instance, some research suggests that police agencies may have claimed to practice community policing to enhance their eligibility for federal funding (Maguire and Katz 2002; Maguire and Mastr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: thinking about police organizations
• 1. How perceptions of the institutional environment shape organizational priorities: findings from a survey of police chiefs
• 2. Active representation and police response to sexual assault complaints
• 3. Examining the impact of organizational and individual characteristics on forensic scientists’ job stress and satisfaction
• 4. Gun crime incident reviews as a strategy for enhancing problem solving and information sharing
• 5. The impact of law enforcement officer perceptions of organizational justice on their attitudes regarding body-worn cameras
• 6. Understanding the culture of craft: lessons from two police agencies
• Index