Toward a life-course perspective of police organizations
Toward a life-course perspective of police organizations
Article Type: Perspectives on policing From: Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, Volume 32, Issue 4
W.R. King,Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency,Vol. 46 No. 2,2009,pp. 213-44,
King takes a different approach to examining police organizations. Utilizing history, time, and process, he argues that the application of a life-course perspective could help scholars better understand police organizations. The suggested use of the life-course perspective is not as a new theory of policing,but rather a different way to evaluate existing theories. While this could be daunting, the timeframe and amount of history needed is dependent on the topic being studied. The application of these factors could help researchers understand the change process itself and clarify temporal issues regarding causation and correlation. Two theories of organizational change are also discussed. The first is structural contingency theory, which states that the environment is rational and thus rewards the organization for being effective and efficient. Conversely, institutional theory states that the environment is not rational, but consists of “legitimacy, symbol, mythology and tradition”(p. 219). The organization adopts policies and practices not because they are efficient and effective, but rather as attempts to please sovereigns to ensure organizational survival.
There are six events over the life-course of a police organization posited by King (2009). The first event, considered unavoidable, is the creation of a new agency. In the 1800s, new agencies were created as a response to general rational or functional concerns. However, reasons for agency creation after that time period and including the present have not been explored. Early founding effects comprise the second event in the life-course. These effects originate both from the attributes and experiences of founders and the mimicking of other similar agencies that are established. Founding effects tend to linger over time due to the initial inertia experienced by an organization. The third event in the life-course is organizational growth. Growth presents challenges to departments in the form of management, coordination, control, and resources. Even though growth can place these stresses on an agency, the overall process is often viewed as positive for both members in and outside the agency. Decline,the fourth event, is often viewed as organizational collapse. This can have a negative impact on agency employees and present challenges to management. The fifth event, crisis, is comprised of three components: the source of the crisis(internal or external), the time span, and whether the crisis is solvable. Disbanding a police organization, or organizational death, is the sixth and final stage of the organizational life-course. There is very little known about not only the disbandment process as a whole, but also specifically regarding the allocation of personnel and equipment and the impact of organizational death on the environment and other agencies. King argues that the death knoll for one agency may likely be an issue that other agencies are dealing with.
Overall, the organizational life-course perspective provides scholars with a different perspective to their existing theoretical beliefs. The life-course perspective’s emphasis on process, change and continuity brings to the table a longitudinal aspect when studying police organizations. Methodological suggestions include retrospective (looking to history), contemporary (systematic observation of current activities) and future or hypothetical methods(exploration of change). This perspective would allow researchers to reach more solid conclusions regarding causation, correlation, and the change process when studying police organizations.
Megan A. PaxtonUniversity of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
