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Argues that US county‐level policing is distinct from municipal policing. Examines differences between them in terms of historical, political, geographical, functional, organizational and regional variations. Suggests how research might be focused to explicate these differences. In particular, presents the idea of a militia, a group organized out of and by a community for its own protection. Contrasts this with the professional paramilitary model associated with large municipal departments. Points out that most police agencies are not large or urban. The greater part of the USA is policed by approximately 3,000 county‐level agencies. Proposes the militia model as a template for further research.

This conceptual article focuses on the small‐town municipal‐level police department, as a distinctive model within the mosaic of US policing. As an example of the success of a low‐tech, nonmilitarized, open systems model, the small‐town police department stands in stark contrast to its urban counterpart. As a result of its affinity towards generalization as opposed to specialization, the small‐town department has higher crime clearance rates and is organizationally receptive to the demands and requirements of community‐oriented policing. The small‐town police department’s absence of “professionalism” and militarism is key to its community connectedness, the foundation of its efficacy.

Using a socio‐historical analytical approach, explains the emergence and evolutionary iterations of the Missouri State Highway Patrol (MSHP) as it developed into a virtual state police organization. The legal history of the MSHP is chronicled, and the cultural opposition to a state police department in Missouri is explained. Despite the show‐me states’ long‐standing opposition to state‐level policing authority, the evolution of the MSHP into a state‐police‐like organization is developed as a model that is representative of numerous other state‐level police organizations across the nation. The evolutionary patterns in the development of the MSHP are foreshadowed by other state‐level police organizations, like the Illinois State Police.

Presents an investigation of the perennial problem of collecting valid empirical data on police vehicle pursuits, an organizationally sensitive and often controversial behavior, through a new data collection strategy using police emergency radio transmissions. Analyzes taped vehicle pursuits recorded on the Illinois State Police Emergency Radio Network and codes them for content as a data source on police vehicle pursuits. Compares these radio‐transmission data with more conventional pursuit data collection methods, e.g. administrative/official data, elicited‐pursuit‐reporting‐form data, and officer‐self‐report data. Evaluates these as an alternative or supplemental data window for empirically studying the incidence and content of police vehicle pursuits. While some differences appear, results from emergency‐channel radio transmission data largely converge with earlier findings from more conventional data collections. Divergent findings, which are few, appear to be largely the artifacts of different samplings of pursuits that the different data collection methods yield, rather than a result of differential validity.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical examination of the characteristics of Indian reservation police agencies at the start of the twenty‐first century.

The paper uses national data on tribal police agencies from the 2000 Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies and from the 2002 Census of Tribal Justice Agencies (both conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics).

The analysis presented documents both common and distinctive trends in Indian Country policing, and compares tribal police agencies on reservations with non‐Indian police organizations generally.

The paper provides an empirical reference point for assessing future changes and developments in this mostly undocumented form of US policing.

Recent policing reforms have strongly emphasized the role of community context in determining the form and content of effective policing, along with the traditional influence of organizational structures. Recognizing the increasing suburbanization of US communities, this study examines the empirical support for the underlying contextual and structural premises of these reforms in a sample of midwestern suburban communities. Merging data from a telephone survey of 194 municipal police departments in the five counties of the Chicago metropolitan statistical area with data on communities from other government sources, multiple regression was used to assess the relative importance of community context and organizational structure factors in accounting for differences in departmental policing styles. The findings both support and contradict some basic assumptions of current community‐oriented policing reforms, as well as some of the findings of prior studies. They underline the importance of empirically testing our theoretical assumptions in all types of community settings.

This chapter focusses on analysing the origins and evolution of the SWOT analysis. It explains the drivers and limitations of the conventional SWOT analysis, laying the groundwork for new decision-making models that can aid researchers and practitioners in comprehending both the external landscape and the internal characteristics of a company. This chapter demonstrates how the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the SWOT analysis can be approached dynamically. Conventional SWOT analysis offers only a limited perspective on the environment and employs terminology that can confuse users, hindering their clear understanding of the factors that influence an organisation’s situation. This chapter provides a concise literature review of tools for evaluating quality management, its resources, and the surrounding environment, which serves as a valuable means to grasp the economic and social context within which a firm operates.

Despite the breadth of knowledge on self and identity formation across the study of organizations, the field of organizational development and change has limited research on the construction of professional identity. Much has been written to describe the “self-concepts” of those practicing and researching in the field, but there have been no investigations that have explored how these “self-concepts” form. In addition, although women have contributed to defining the “self” in the field, men have held the dominant perspective on the subject. Thus, in this chapter, we address a disparity in the research by exploring the construction of professional identity in the field of organizational development and change, and we give voice to the renowned women who helped to build the field. Using the profiles of 17 American women included in The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers, we perform a narrative analysis based upon the concepts and models prevalent in the literature on identity formation. By disentangling professional identity formation of the notable women in the field, we can begin to see the nuance and particularities involved in its construction and gain deeper understandings about effective ways to prepare individuals to work in and advance the field.

This study compares filmic and televisual representations of fictional black presidents to white Americans’ reactions to the advent of the United States’s first African American president. My main goal is to determine if there is convergence between these mediated representations and whites’ real-world representations of Barack Obama. I then weigh the evidence for media pundits’ speculations that Obama owes his election to positive portrayals of these fictional heads of state.

The film and television analyses examine each black president’s social network, personality, character traits, preparation for office, and leadership ability. I then compare the ideological messages conveyed through these portrayals to the messages implicated in white Americans’ discursive and pictorial representations of Barack Obama.

Both filmic and televisual narratives and public discourses and images construct and portray black presidents with stereotypical character traits and abilities. These representations are overwhelmingly negative and provide no support for the argument that there is a cause–effect relationship between filmic and televisual black presidents and Obama’s election victory.

Neither reel nor real-life black presidents can elude the representational quagmire that distorts African Americans’ abilities and diversity. Discourses, iconography, narratives, and other representations that define black presidents through negative tropes imply that blacks are incapable of effective leadership. These hegemonic representations seek to delegitimize black presidents and symbolically return them to subordinate statuses.

Industrial relations, organizational behavior, and human resource management scholars have studied numerous aspects of internal workplace conflict resolution, ranging from the design of conflict resolution systems to the processes used for resolving conflicts to the outcomes of the systems. Scholars from these specialties, however, have paid considerably less attention to external workplace conflict resolution through litigation. This chapter analyzes certain areas of such litigation, focusing specifically on workplace conflicts involving issues of managerial and employee misclassification, independent contractor versus employee status, no-poaching agreements, and executive compensation.

Leading recent cases involving these issues are examined, with particular attention given to the question of whether the conflicts reflected therein could have been resolved internally or through alternative dispute resolution (ADR) methods rather than through litigation.

Implications of this analysis are drawn for workplace conflict resolution theory and practice. In doing so, I conclude that misclassification disputes could likely be resolved internally or through ADR rather than through litigation, but that no-poaching and executive compensation disputes could very likely not be resolved internally or through ADR.

The chapter draws on and offers an integrated analysis of particular types of workplace conflict that are typically treated separately by scholars and practitioners. These include misclassification conflicts, no poaching and labor market competition conflicts, and executive compensation conflicts. The originality and value of this chapter are to show that despite their different contexts and particular issues, the attempted resolution through litigation of these types of workplace conflicts has certain common, systematic characteristics.