Leadership and Management in Police Organizations

Matthew J. Giblin

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781483353173
• eBook ISBN: 9781506352268
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

"Addresses the different management styles that are applicable to large as well as small police agencies."

— Dr. Michael Wigginton Jr., University of Mississippi

 

Built on a foundation of nearly 1,200 references,  Leadership and Management in Police Organizations is a highly readable text that shows how organizational theory and behavior can be applied to improve the operations, leadership, and management of law enforcement. Author Matthew J. Giblin emphasizes leadership and management as separate skills in successful police supervisors and executives, illustrating to students how the two skills combine to improve individual and organizational efficacy in policing. Readers will come away with a stronger understanding of why organizational decisions  matter and the impact research can have on police departments.

1 Introduction to Police Organizations

Chapter Outline

• Overview
  • Organizational Theory
  • Organizational Behavior
• Defining Organization
  • Recognizing Variation
  • Conceptual Similarities
• Your Turn . . .

Overview

This book starts with two simple premises: Police organizations matter, and the study of police organizations matters. As we approach the 200th anniversary of the first truly modern police force in the world, these statements may provoke few objections. After all, for many, it is likely hard to envision a society without some apparatus charged with preventing and responding to crime- and disorder-related calls and providing a multitude of service-oriented functions. Police organizations are indeed pervasive in the United States. According to recent statistics, 15,388 state, county, and local general-purpose law enforcement agencies employing 724,690 full-time and 39,101 part-time sworn employees serve jurisdictions across the country. ¹ In the federal system, 120,000 law enforcement officers work in 73 agencies, some well-known (e.g., Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Administration, and US Postal Inspection Service) and others more obscure (e.g., Bureau of Land Management, Tennessee Valley Authority, and National Institutes of Health). ² Tens of thousands of additional sworn personnel work in special jurisdictions (e.g., campus public safety, park jurisdictions, hospitals) and in civilian capacities throughout the policing industry. ³ Moreover, the private policing sector (i.e., private security) is several times greater than the public policing sector. ⁴

The statement about the importance of police organizations, however, is more than a statement about the ubiquity of police organizations and their role in society. It has to do with the organization as an important focal point in its own right. Stated differently, we cannot truly understand policing in the United States and elsewhere without understanding police organizations and their influence on the individuals within them. This brings us to the interrelated fields of organizational theory and organizational behavior, two areas of study bringing together a diverse range of scholarly fields, including management, industrial psychology, the sociology of organizations, public administration, and others. These areas of inquiry provide a lens for studying organizations generally and, given the focus of this text, police organizations specifically.

Organizational Theory

Organizational theory is characterized by a macro-level approach to the study of organizations. ⁵ This means that the entire organization serves as the central unit, either alone or within a network of other organizations (e.g., the population of police departments in a state). Organizational theory researchers are particularly interested in describing and explaining differences across organizations, especially in their structures and practices, using organizational (e.g., size, age of the department) and environmental (e.g., type of city government, funding) predictors. ⁶ For example, researchers might ask why some police agencies are more technologically advanced than others, adopting geographic information systems software, license plate readers, advanced DNA testing techniques, and body cameras before peer agencies. ⁷ They might address the policing of protests. In 2015, demonstrations in New York City, unlike in Ferguson, Missouri, remained largely peaceful. New York Police Commissioner William Bratton attributed the difference to the intentions of the protestors and the preparedness of each city’s police department. As he expressed to one news outlet, “I think one of the things we benefit from is that we have so many different demonstrations. I have 150 events on average every week in the city.” ⁸ Ferguson’s police department lacked the same level of experience dealing with large protests. Again, the organization—in this case, its crisis readiness—mattered. In both examples, theory helps us understand why organizations look the way they do or engage in certain activities (adopting innovation or exhibiting preparedness). More specifically, it helps us make sense of the variations and similarities observed throughout a population of police organizations.

Organizational Behavior

Organizational behavior research addresses the individual within the organization, what researchers have described as the micro-level perspective emphasizing a “‘small details’ view.” ⁹ In this case, attention turns to individual or group behavior, including performance, insofar as it is affected by the organizational context in which it occurs. To illustrate, consider police recruiting practices, activities that shape the actions of prospective police recruits. When staffing shortages necessitate hiring additional officers, departments attempt to attract a qualified applicant pool. Additionally, they often attempt to expand the pool of applicants who are underrepresented in policing (e.g., minorities, females). The RAND Corporation examined the San Diego Police Department’s recruiting strategies during the 1990s and, in doing so, illustrated some of the challenges in diversifying police agencies. ¹⁰ Between January and August 2007, 1,335 applicants sat for the written examination required of prospective police officers. White applicants accounted for nearly half (48%) of all test takers, followed by Hispanics (32%) and blacks (8%). ¹¹ Across all racial groups, females accounted for one in 10 test takers. Slightly more than half (54%) of applicants pass the written exam and the physical fitness test, a figure that varies slightly by race (range of 47% for blacks to 55% for whites) and gender (50% for females to 54% for males). ¹² Of these individuals, only 22 percent make it through an initial review by a sergeant who looks for “any obvious disqualifying responses.” ¹³ Successful candidates move on to a more thorough background investigation. Overall, only 3 percent of blacks completing the initial exam are hired, compared to 14 percent of whites. This disparity is due, in large measure, to the background investigation addressing issues such as “prior employment, drug-use history, medical history, involvement in the civil- or criminal-justice system, and financial health.” ¹⁴

Defining Organization

Recognizing Variation

If the fields of organizational theory and behavior help us describe and explain police organizations, we must overcome any tendencies to treat police departments and their members as singular homogenous groups or collections of simplistic categories. In many respects, this tendency is geographic in nature, reflecting a big-city bias. ¹⁵ Our understanding of the police is generally derived from knowledge of departments and officers in large, urban areas. This is not entirely surprising since the majority (62%) of all full-time sworn local police officers work in the largest 5 percent of all agencies. ¹⁶ In addition, the news and popular media expose viewers to depictions of large agency practices since cities such as New York, Las Vegas, New Orleans, and Los Angeles provide the settings for many crime dramas. Large agencies also serve as sites for research studies, allowing scholars to secure large samples of officers, encounters, or other units of analysis relatively quickly. These factors by themselves are not necessarily problematic. They only create challenges when they contribute to “the persistent notion that most policing is the same in form, function, and content wherever it is found.” ¹⁷ For example, many textbooks display some variant of an organizational chart to illustrate police department structures (see Figure 1.1). These organizational charts are useful for highlighting aspects of organizational structure, including a department’s vertical, horizontal, and spatial division of work (see Chapter 2), but only for organizations capable of adopting even remotely similar structures. Nearly half of all local police agencies (47.8%) employ fewer than 10 full-time sworn officers; a complex structure such as the one presented in Figure 1.1 is impossible. ¹⁸

Bifurcating the population of police agencies into two categories—large and small—does little to overcome this tendency to overlook differences. Small agencies dominate the policing industry, at least in number. Yet small is often equated with rural, an assumption that overlooks the great variety of agencies. ¹⁹ According to a 2004 census of local law enforcement agencies, 9,708 municipal agencies employing 25 or fewer full-time sworn officers operated throughout the United States. Fully half of these agencies operated in large metropolitan counties. ²⁰ For example, the Hartford (Illinois) Police Department functioned in Madison County within the St. Louis metropolitan area. Even though the agency only had four officers at the time, it provided services within a populous region. In contrast, the Bushnell Police Department’s five officers worked in the relatively rural McDonough County in the northwest part of Illinois. Thus, even attempts to group agencies into sufficiently broad categories masks within-category differences.

These differences are important, potentially helping us address outcomes such as officer enforcement behavior or accidents. Consider the use of unpaid reserve or auxiliary police officers. According to a 2013 survey, roughly one-third of local police agencies reported using these volunte...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Brief Table of Contents
• Detailed Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction to Police Organizations
• 2 Police Organizational Structure
• 3 Organizational Theory and Police Organizations
• 4 Recruitment, Training, and Retention
• 5 Motivation and Job Design
• 6 Leadership
• 7 Power and Compliance
• 8 Stress and Burnout
• 9 Organizational Implications of Police Innovation
• 10 Measuring Individual Performance
• 11 Organizational Accidents and Disbanding
• 12 Contemporary Issues in Police Organizations
• Glossary
• Index
• About the Author