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Police employee organizations and unions have been identified as obstacles to police management as well as to policy implementation. While much has been made of the behavior of these organizations, little empirical work has addressed the nature of these organizations in terms of their structure, membership, and perspectives on police labor relationships. These organizations have mainly been examined by the use of police chief perspectives, or case studies of large police unions. This article addresses these issues using a national sample of police employee organizations and unions.

Many studies over the past two decades have demonstrated that employees with low levels of organizational commitment (OC) tend to be less effective. Recent research has suggested that the OC levels of police officers in Australia and New Zealand are lower that the OC levels of police in other countries. In addition, more experienced officers (especially sergeants) have lower levels of OC than less experienced officers. Reports the results of a survey of Australian police officers’ views on improving commitment to the police organization. Overall, the officers suggested that OC could be enhanced if they received more support and encouragement from senior officers. Significantly, the supervisors in the sample were more likely to identify problems with the structure and processes of the organization, whereas nonsupervisors tended to identify personal issues. A major implication of these findings is that training and information programs for supervisors need to be revised and reinforced.

This paper seeks to empirically describe the role of research and planning units within contemporary, local police organizations in the US.

Data were collected from a national survey of police organizations, municipal police agencies and sheriffs' offices in the US and analyzed using univariate statistics.

The findings demonstrate that the task scope of research and planning units (RPU) within local law enforcement organizations is heterogeneous. RPUs perform a range of tasks and these tasks differ from one agency to another. When separate tasks are aggregated into broader categories, the data reveal that, overall, RPUs focus primarily on administrative tasks.

These findings suggest that RPUs primarily focus on administrative support tasks rather than research and planning projects. Thus, RPUs may be underutilized by law enforcement organizations. These findings suggest that administrators consider how the task scope of RPUs can be refocused to help law enforcement agencies achieve their goals.

This paper empirically updates the understanding of the tasks and functions of contemporary police research and planning units.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize a stage model for maturity levels for police oversight agencies.

The paper is based on a literature review covering police oversight organizations and stages of growth models.

As a conceptual paper, the main findings are related to the appropriateness of the stage model, each identified stage, and the characteristics of each stage.

An empirical study of police oversight agencies all over the world would be necessary to verify the proposed stage model.

The managers of police oversight agencies can apply the model in three ways: identify the current status; identify future direction; and evaluate the past progression.

Hitherto, knowledge transfer from police misconduct cases has not been conceptualized as a learning process in police districts and general law enforcement.

Specialized police gang units are a rapidly emerging form of concentrated social control. Prior research, however, into the creation of specialized gang units suffers from a number of theoretical and methodological shortcomings. These shortcomings make it difficult to understand which of several potential explanations can best account for the establishment of specialized police gang units. Three perspectives are examined that have been hypothesized by policymakers and academics to explain the creation of gang units: contingency theory, social threat theory, and resource dependency theory. Using data obtained from police departments and communities around the country, the explanatory power of measures derived from these three theories is explored, while controlling for several environmental and organizational influences.

The purpose of this paper is to respond to previous scholarship by providing a framework for a post‐modern policing organization that maximizes the police/community relationship while still controlling discretion.

This paper provides a model of police administration by expanding upon previous work through a discussion on police bureaucracy, organizational governance, and police effectiveness.

Police organizations have the ability to transform themselves into institutions deemed as legitimate legal authorities providing effective service to their recipients through: limiting the arbitrary exercise of power; establishing institutional arrangements for successful social problem solving; and cultivating the appropriate character for those who carry out the institutional responsibilities. Through this process, the police organization can find the right balance between a theory of governance and modern policing.

The community policing philosophy advocates a strong relationship between the police and the community it serves. However, if the police forces do not have the institutional capacity and tools of governance to be deemed a legitimate and effective law enforcement body by the community, this philosophy of policing is sure to fail.

A different perspective that integrates principles of good governance, public administration, and political theory that tie into an effective and efficient relationship between police organizations and those they serve is taken. Further, the traditional concept of community policing that has overlooked some important structural features needed to carry out this philosophy is argued.

This paper aims to suggest that a police organization should prefer change management approaches and methods that would not only lead the organization towards an effective position in preventing crime and fighting terrorism but also enable it to be in harmony with the organizational environment that answers both the expectations of the organization's employees and of the public.

This is a discussion paper.

The goal will be achieved through developing a new approach, namely the “Tailoring model”, setting out from the similarities between the change manager and a tailor, who designs and prepares a garment taking into consideration both the physical characteristics and personal preferences of the client with the environmental conditions where the suit will be worn.

The paper not only adds significant perspectives for police organization managers in conducting reform initiatives to adapt community policing successfully but also contributes to the literature by developing a model for adapting change management approaches on a specific field of police organizations.

Aside from a few groundbreaking studies, there has been little empirical exploration into the structure of American police organizations. Traditional organizational inquiries have suggested that structural characteristics can be differentiated between those that represent complexity or differentiation within the organization and those that represent control mechanisms to coordinate and manage the complexity. This research investigates whether these various structural elements are indicative of two latent constructs by developing and testing measurement models representing structural complexity and control. Organizational scholars have also argued that structural complexity increases the demand for structural control. Maguire investigated this issue in the context of police organizations and found little support for the hypothesis. The paper reexamines this relationship by extending and replicating Maguire’s analysis to ascertain if a different specification and sample sustain his conclusion. Utilizing data from the 1997 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey and a survey conducted by Edward Maguire, the paper explores these issues using a sample of 401 large, municipal police organizations in the USA. The results indicate that structural control is unidimensional, while structural complexity is not. This study also provides modest evidence supporting an association between structural complexity and control.

The current research explores the structural elaboration of municipal American police organizations, specifically, the structural complexity of police organizations and its relationship to time. The purpose of this paper is to describe and test essential elements of the structural elaboration hypothesis.

The authors explore the structural elaboration hypothesis utilizing a sample of 219 large police departments across the USA. Data are drawn from multiple waves of the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey and are analyzed using tobit and OLS regression techniques.

While there is some evidence that police departments are becoming more elaborate, little evidence for the structural elaboration hypothesis as a function of time is found.

This project is the first to specifically explore the structural elaboration hypothesis across multiple time points. Additionally, results highlight structural trends across a panel of large American police organizations and provide potential explanations for changes. Suggestions for large-scale policing data collection are also provided.

According to community policing advocates, police agencies should implement a variety of important organizational changes. These changes are supposed to occur in a number of different substantive domains, including the culture, behavior, and structure of police organizations. This paper examines the evidence for change in just one of these domains: formal organizational structure. Based on concepts derived from organization theory, and using data from six different data sets, the paper explores whether the structures of US police organizations changed during the 1990s. Overall, it finds mixed evidence. Some changes have occurred in the direction encouraged by community policing reformers, some changes have occurred in the opposite direction, and some changes have not occurred at all.