Police Leadership as Practice

Cathrine Filstad

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781000538359
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Police Leadership as Practice applies a leadership-as-practice approach (emphasising leader-employee relationships) to law enforcement. This book provides a progressive and collaborative leadership text for students of law enforcement, as well as insights into leadership dynamics in all organisations for students and researchers of business and management.

The police leadership-as-practice perspective provides a holistic understanding of leadership in the police, identifying factors that inhibit and promote learning. It refers to four main components as dynamic and continuously evolving processes:

• Strategies: social mission and organisation, along with strategies as practice
• Community: organisational and police culture, identity and belonging, community of practice and competencies
• Participation: sense-making and discretion; power and politics
• Activities: learning as practice, change and change management as practice

Practical and enriched with case studies, examples and best practice, the textbook is also rigorously research based. Authored by a professor of business and management with specialist knowledge in police leadership, it brings the cutting edge of leadership thinking to the practicalities of policing. It is essential reading for those engaged with policing, leadership roles, and management.

Part 1

Police leadership as practice

DOI: 10.4324/9781003224105-2

Chapter 1

Why a leadership-as-practice perspective?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003224105-3

This chapter discusses and argues for the importance of the leadership-as-practice approach to increase our knowledge of police leadership as relational and collective activities and performances. The chapter provides a critical view by providing a literature review on leadership perspectives and conventional leadership literature. Still, the leadership literature is dominated by normative leadership models on how the individual leaders must perform, independent of context. A practice perspective shifts focus to social and cultural relations and interactions between leaders and their subordinates, the collective, the negotiated, the sensemaking of participation in leadership practice.

Practice-based studies have made a profound impact in the fields of leadership, innovation, learning, knowing, and competencies in organisations since the early 2000s (Nicolini, Gherardi, & Yanow, 2003; Gherardi, 2006; Carroll, Levy, & Richmond, 2008; Crevani & Endrissat, 2016; Raelin, 2016; Christie, Hoholm, & Mørk, 2018). There are various approaches to practice within the field of practice-based research. For example, the cultural approach would focus on how the culture is produced and reproduced in collective and context-dependent practices. The activity theory points out that practices must be understood in relation to objects and artefacts. The situated learning theory considers learning and competence to be context-dependent and anchored in everyday practices (Gherardi, 2006; La Rocca, Hoholm, & Mørk, 2017). The situation- and context-dependent view of learning and knowledge previously introduced the notions of situated learning and communities of practice in 1991 (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Brown & Duguid, 1991). These notions represent an alternative approach to learning and knowledge, which used to be mainly seen as individual processes free from situations and practices.

The variety of approaches to practice-based studies still provides a common understanding of what the practice perspective entails. First of all, practice consists of continuous and dynamic processes and should therefore be described with the type of verbs listed in the introduction. Secondly, practice is a set of social, relational, cultural, and collective actions that are integrated and rooted in everyday practices. Thirdly, there may be several different practices competing, cooperating, or separated from each other by tight borders. Police leaders are going to participate in several practices, such as their own leadership practices and interdisciplinary leadership practices, but also various forms of professional practices, practices involving external partners, reform practices, and the like. This is illustrated by the notions of landscapes of practice and networks of practice (Pyrko, Dörfler, & Eden, 2019). Additionally, internally occurring phenomena within organisations also shape practice perspectives. This is why I will return to the topics of change management as practice, strategy as practice, and learning as practice later. But first, what is practice, or what can it be?

What is practice?

In the academic world, the relation between theory and practice has attracted a lot of attention. The dualism between the two concepts is significant, and it is often reinforced through the idea that academics own and are experts in theory, while practitioners own and are experts in practice. This dualism is further reinforced by the fact that a phenomenon such as leadership is often either classified as purely theoretical or as practical rather than as a combination of both. Academia has developed theories, scientific “truths”, and the “evidence basis”, while practice has been kept separate but adjacent to these concepts. The distinction between theory and practice is claimed by many to be considerably larger and more pure now than before. Theories tend to be more often considered the “right thing”, and practitioners who do not rely on theories enough are viewed as useless. This problematic development is not necessarily rooted in history, which I illustrate in the next paragraphs. The advocates for a different view, like Aristotle and Marx, did not distance knowledge from the practice it represents but instead built a bridge between viewing theories as pure knowledge and knowing a particular phenomenon, emphasising that academics and practitioners should be more interdependent.

Aristotle is still relevant for understanding knowledge, perhaps even more so because he was mostly concerned with practice. He distinguishes between praxis, episteme (thinking), and poiesis (creating) as the three forms of knowledge. Praxis, he argues, are actions that, together with episteme and poiesis, constitute basic human activities. Practice through actions constitutes the very goal of developing practical knowledge. What distinguishes good practice is that it serves the good of the people. Possessing practical wisdom (fronesis) is necessary for achieving good practice. To attain this kind of wisdom, the practitioner must have experience in and with practice. By emphasising the interdependence between theory and practice, where the prominence is given to practice, Aristotle shows that the distinction between theory and practice is artificial.

Similar ideas are also found in Karl Marx’s philosophy. Not only do theory and practice presuppose each other, but they also mutually shape each other, he believes. In Marx’s view, practice is the reciprocity that occurs when the subject and the object meet in a dialectical movement. The most challenging aspect of these examples of the earlier views on practice is understanding practice as the guiding force rather than completely detaching theory from practice – understanding what should be done rather than what could be done. The paradox can often occur when “others” are telling the practitioners what the characteristics of their practice are, without having studied that specific practice themselves.

By way of introduction, I have described how practice-based studies refer to practice as a common understanding of practical actions and experiences (Orlikowski, 2010). Reference is made to practice, relational and collective, as well as to formal and informal factors, which are described as dynamic and evolving processes between leaders and their subordinates, who are all participants in practice (Gherardi, 2009; Nicolini, 2012). Practice is described as a variety of activities, a nexus of what is being done and said (Levina & Orlikowski, 2009). The variety of activities is organised around: (1) an understanding of how things should be done, (2) rules, and (3) goals that give meaning and encourage the members to invest in practice (Schatzki, 1997: 3). Practice therefore consists of activities and dynamic processes (not stable entities) between participants that are organised around a common understanding of “how things should be done” (Gherardi, 2009: 146). Accordingly, practice provides action resources, cognitive resources, procedural resources, and physical resources utilised and negotiated collectively by the participants in activities through social and cultural interactions (Whittington, 2006). This presents an alternative approach to leadership and to the perspectives on leadership that have largely dominated the literature. Leadership perspectives are considered in the next section.

Perspectives on leadership

Leadership literature looks like a large puzzle with pieces from different and sometimes contradictory perspectives and disciplines. Various forms of leadership are often claimed to be the perfect formula for good, effective, strategic, clear, and/or change-oriented leadership. But when, for instance, is leadership effective? What are the features that make it effective and who is it effective for? Is leadership effective when investigators process as many cases as possible in the shortest possible time and reduce the number of unresolved cases? Is it effective in terms of achieving goals? Effective for the investigator? Effective for those who are processing the case? The same applies to good leadership. Is it good because people agree to be led voluntarily? Does this form of good leadership provide equally good quality and competencies when completing work tasks? Is good leadership voluntary movement towards a goal based on the belief that leadership research has defined the “good” to be about how leaders can influence efficiency (Karp, 2019)?

What is good (or good enough) and what is effective are quite impossible to measure. When does, for instance, the investigator know it is time to finish the investigation? When is the collected evidence good enough for further proceedings? In my field studies from 2019, I found that many police leaders are concerned with being available for their team members. This applies to all leadership levels. They consider availability to be part of good leadership, but that is a subjective notion because what is perceived as good leadership and availability by one employee will not necessarily be the same for another. Besides, what makes a manager available? Seeing the manager twice a day, talking to them informally, or communicating via email? Or is it enough to simply know that the manager is around, possibly just a phone call away if you need them? Being a manager is demanding, complex, challenging, and sometimes quite trivial, and an increasing number of people even argue that managers are not more important than other workers and that belief in what managers are capable of accomplishing is greatly exaggerated (Alvesson, 2016). What is the best formula for relational leadership, situational leadership, value-based leadership, distributed leadership, value-based leadership, charismatic leadership, trust-based leadership, ethical leadership, cultural leadership, etc.? Some of these leadership perspectives deal with relations between leader and followers while others deal with leadership providing something special and that something happens when bringing people together. Other leadership perspectives are about the individual leader’s accomplishments. The complex puzzle of spanning between several academic disciplines leaves leadership as a conundrum.

The lack of consensus is problematic and needs to be acknowledged because distinctions between good and bad leadership are often made without consensus on what it means. The ideal of a heroic leader still exists in leadership literature (Antonakis, 2011; Arnulf & Larsen, 2015). Normative models of how the idealised leader should behave (Fleming, 2015; Karp 2019), undertaking performances across a variety of groups, organisational situations, and contexts (Zaccaro, Kemp, & Bader, 2004), as opposed to how leaders practice leadership, still dominate the leadership literature. Not acknowledging the situatedness and differences in social and cultural contexts makes it difficult to decide whether it is the leader, the leadership, or the context that is good or bad. Good leadership in the police, for instance, is based on the social mission where police managers shall: (1) set the direction and drive change, (2) motivate and develop staff, and (3) achieve results in cooperation with others (Police Directorate, 2017). Good leadership should be value-based, that is, based on the police values of respect, courage, commitment to the common good, and hands-on involvement. Is there a formula for this? Do certain personal traits and the leadership style of a police leader exemplify these qualities and therefore be characterised as good leadership across areas of responsibility, departments, and districts within the police? But how is good police leadership recognised in a police context where police leaders face somewhat incompatible sets of expectations from, on one hand, bureaucratic requirements, and on the other hand, risk-taking operative policing activities (Golding & Savage, 2011)? And can the leadership literature guide police leaders in their performances?

Leadership traits and leadership style

Outstanding leaders have traditionally been evaluated based on their personality capabilities (Arnulf, 2012), where contemporary theorists are preoccupied with traits and behavioural, situational, and transformational leadership styles (Davis & Silvestri, 2020). The kinds of traits these leaders had and the way they distinguished themselves from followers/colleagues formed the basis for trait theories in the leadership literature. It was important to identify which personal traits were essentially innate and therefore stable (as opposed to personal traits that may be developed), and which resulted in outstanding leaders (Martinsen, 2015). Personality was considered stable in the same way. An outstanding leader was supposed to be able to lead all types of organisations regardless of the industry, situations, participants, and so on. The personality traits of the leaders were their individual competencies, their “property”. Trait-based leadership identify individuals’ capacity for leadership, traits that are needed to succeed as effecti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Endorsements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Introduction
• PART 1: Police leadership as practice
• PART 2: Strategy
• PART 3: Community
• PART 4: Participation
• PART 5: Activities
• Index