Classical police management: Bureaucracy
(Max Weber)
• Characteristics that organizations need in order to operate on a rational basis
Bureaucratic Organization is designed to:
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– maximize effectiveness by which an organization’s goals are accomplished maximize efficiency by getting the most done at the least cost control uncertainty by regulating workers, supplies, markets, etc.

Modern Police Organization exhibits all of these bureaucratic traits:
•Specialization (organized into bureaus - patrol, investigation, support, administration, resources)
•Centralization/hierarchy (Police Chief)
•Rules (Dept. Policies/Regulations designed to guide police behavior, Rule of Law)
•Meritocracy (college education, police academy competitive application, time-in-rank system of promotion, police productivity)
•Impersonality (impartial interpreters of situations on the street, application of law)

Management
• Directing individuals to achieve organizational goals in an efficient and effective manner
Supervision
• Focuses primarily on leading and controlling
Organizing
• The process of arranging personnel and physical resources to carry out plans and accomplish goals and objectives
Leading
• Motivating others to perform various tasks that will contribute to the accomplishment of goals and objectives
Planning
• The process of preparing for the future by setting goals and objectives and developing courses of action for accomplishing them
Controlling
• The process by which managers determine how the quality and the quantity of departmental systems and services can be improved, if goals and objectives are being accomplished
Chain of command
• The higher the position, the greater the power, authority, and influence

Traditional Police Administration Model:
Paramilitary in Design and Organization
•classic bureaucracy
•consistent with reformers and legalistic models
•Wilson’s (1950) example
Police Administration is the classic
•limits discretion
•goal is to control crime

•Rigid, inflexible
•Communication chains are faulty
•Internally focused
•Contributes to authoritarian policing style
•Stifles creativity by limiting the talents of its employees; alienating - may contribute to cynicism & low worker satisfaction

• Classical approach attacked by police management theorists in the early 1970s
• Need for a more flexible and democratic organizational model
• Research indicated that police work was not directly related to law enforcement, but rather to maintaining order and providing social services
– How much of police work focused on crime? 10-20%
• The knowledge gained from the behavioral science research began to influence the police:
– Importance of increased employee involvement in decision-making, of recognizing a broader police role, and of working in partnerships with the community
– Complexity of police job is eclipsed by bureaucratic models

Systems theory: Importance of interdependence
All parts of a system are interrelated & dependent on one another.
Closed system: Does not interact and adapt to its environment
Open system: Interacts with and adapts to its environment
Contingency theory: Based on open systems theory
Recognizes many internal & external factors that influence organizational behavior
Contingency management: It all depends on the particular situation
• What are the main environmental factors for PDs?
Constituencies/influences include: Community, Organization, Legal,
Political and Individual

• Contemporary theory that argues organizations are not entirely rational entities (Crank & Langworthy
1992)
• Agencies respond to influences who are key players in the LEGITIMACY of the organization
• Key Players known as “SOVEREIGNS”
• Who are relevant sovereigns for police agencies?
• Sovereigns are active in Myth/Conventional Wisdom spinning.
• Thus PDs wind up changing to ensure legitimacy in response to new myths (rather than a rational basis for action)

Institutional Theory predicts organizational change to occur in 2 situations:
– When the changes have symbolic value for the legitimacy of the PD
– When the “changes” do not upset the day-to-day of the PD
The result: Change is often symbolic. with little tangible impact
(other than in the image management/PR aspect of the PD)

• Private sector influences on Management
Approaches:
Corporate strategies
Developed through a process that examines how the organization’s capabilities fit the current and future environmental demands
• Total quality management (TQM)
Quality-control techniques and the process of continuous improvement
Reinventing government
Improving organizational performance through reorganization, downsizing, and TQM

Concerned with the formal patterns of arrangements developed by police management to link people together in order to accomplish organizational goals
Modern Police Organization: Tall vs. Flat Designs
Tall: Hierarchical & Narrower control
Flat: Few hierarchical levels & Wider control
-Decentralized: Authority and decision-making are delegated to lower organizational levels
- Emphasizes discretion, Requires better trained officers, Generalists (democratic?)

Organizational Design & Community Policing
Criticism of the Classical Paramilitary Design:
As departments moved toward community policing, the paramilitary design is being questioned
1. Strict rules cannot be applied to policing because of the nature of the work
2. Orders are rarely required
3. A great amount of initiative and discretion are required
4. Managerial philosophy is characterized by an attitude of distrust, control, and punishment

Continued influence of Paramilitary Design
The simultaneous rise of: a) Flat Structures b) PPUs (Kraska and Cubellis 1997)
• Generic term for tradition SWAT
• Becoming a normal part of routine patrol work
• Not just reserved for crisis/emergency response)
• Not attributable to fluctuations in serious crime rate

• Acronym for COMPare STATistics
• Technology as a mechanism for assessing performance & achieving accoutability
• Utilizes current crime data to analyze crime patterns and to respond quickly with appropriate resources and crime strategies
• Allows top-level managers to share information about crime and holds them accountable for the crime rate in their jurisdictions

• Evaluating the Effectiveness of Police Organizations:
– Do they accomplish their goals?
– Variety of Goals
– Crime and disorder measures
» Uniform Crime Report
» National Incident-Based Reporting System
» National Crime Victimization Survey
» Arrest rates
» Crime clearance rates
– Community measures
– Individual and team measures

Police Departments as Learning Organizations
–An organization that is able to process what it has learned and adapt accordingly.
Elements of a Learning Organization:
–Research and Development unit. Actually does R&D, not simple statistical profiles of department activities.
–Expand police-researcher partnerships. Some departments actually hire criminologists to work with their R&D sections.
–Organize police work around POP and take seriously the
SARA model of problem solving.
–Use senior police executives to reduce turf battles between department sections.
–Match police performance levels to present-day industry standards. (Every community should require a stockholders report on its local department.)

Police Subculture: What is Subculture?
– Informal organizational influences including values, beliefs and norms for behavior
– Perhaps more influential than formal organizational factors
– How is it created and supported?
• Socialization: Recruits learn the values and behavioral patterns of experienced officers
• In response to insularity
– Public world of policing: Presented to the public as the essence of police work
– Private world of policing: Characterized as politically conservative, closed, or secretive, with a high degree of cynicism and an emphasis on loyalty, solidarity, and respect for authority
• Employee Organizations & Unions