Ⅰ. Introduction.
At one time productivity measurement and productivity improvement were terms confined to private industry. Up until now, police administrators have not been held to close account for the use of resources. While there have been instances where they have been held responsible, fairly or unfairly, for police corruption, increased crime, or for inept handling of mass public disorders, for the most part police leaders have not been held accountable for the productivity and improvement of their departments by any well-developed standards.
The environments surrounding the police have been changing. Paralleling the growth of consumerism and managerialism within the public sector as a whole, the focus on productivity has been intensified in the police. Leishman et al analyse the rise of 'New Public Management'(NPM), with its emphasis on market forces, reorganizing public-sector management to resemble a more business-oriented approach, the promotion of greater efficiency, developing performance indicators, and making public agencies more consumer-responsive. NPM has had a marked impact on nearly all public-sector organizations, and the police service has been increasingly obliged to embrace NPM. Farnham and Horton noted the cultural shift from the traditional public-service ethos(based on 'need, equity, fairness and altruism') to that of 'public business'.
But such a movement (to public business emphasizing productivity) in the police wouldn't succeed if the mismatch between organizational structure and organizational culture exists. Culture plays a significant role in organizational change. Organizational change is not just about changing structure, policy, and process ; it is also about changing the assumptions, beliefs, and attitudes of an organization's members. As such, culture may be one of the most significant stumbling blocks on the road of successful change.
So, now is the time to investigate police organizational culture and its influence on police productivity systematically. Such needs made this study possible.
Ⅱ. Theoretical Backgrounds & Setting a Framework for Analyses.
1. Theoretical Backgrounds.
1) Police Organizational Culture
Organizational culture is a set of shared values, often taken for granted, that help people in an organization understand which actions are considered acceptable and which are considered unacceptable. Often, these values are communicated through stories and other symbolic means.
Police culture has been a topic of study for over forty years. Synthesizing many explanations about police cultures, Paoline suggested a conceptual model of the police culture which explains its causes, prescriptions, and outcomes. It's like fig. 1.
Fig. 1) A conceptual model of police culture
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But such traditional explanations of the police culture have some problems. First, they have tended to oversimplify the role and primary influence of culture by explaining it in monolithic terms where members of an organization share a common set of values. Although conventional wisdom about police culture focuses on the cultural homogeneity of officers, some researchers have noted important differences, which could be expected to affect a unitary police culture.
Second, most of the research on the police culture has been explanatory and descriptive in nature. Those studies appear to have accepted the existence of police culture without question and, thus, have sought to describe its characteristics. Few studies have been more explanatory in nature and question whether or not such a culture exists and, if found to be present, address the issue of how prevalent or widespread its adoption in among law enforcement officers.
Third, studies of police culture have tended to view this phenomenon in a pejorative fashion. For example, many have asserted that the major barrier to reforming the police is the culture. Others have noted that the culture often endorses the violations of citizen rights and misuses of police authority. Relatedly, researchers have found that efforts to ensure accountability of the police have been met with cultural resistance, stemming from the impenetrable "blue wall of silence" that often thwarts investigations of officer wrongdoing.
In this study, Competing Values Model(CVM) was used to cope with such problems with traditional police culture studies. The CVM was developed initially from research conducted on the major indicators of effective organizations. John Campbell and his colleagues created a list of thirty-nine indicators that he claimed represented a comprehensive set of all possible measures for organizational effectiveness. That list of indicators was analyzed by Bon Quinn and John Rohrbaugh to determine if patterns or clusters could be identified. Since thirty nine indicators are too many to comprehend or to be useful in organizations, they sought a more parsimonious way to identify the key factors of effectiveness. Those thirty-nine indicators of effectiveness were submitted to a statistical analysis, and two major dimensions emerged that organized the indicators into four main clusters. One dimension differentiates effectiveness criteria that emphasize flexibility, discretion, and dynamism from criteria that emphasize stability, order, and control. The second dimension differentiates effectiveness criteria that emphasize an internal orientation, integration, and unity from criteria that emphasize an external orientation, differentiation, and rivalry. Together these two dimensions form four quadrants, each representing a distinct set of organizational effectiveness indicators. The four clusters of criteria define the core values on which judgments about organizations are made. What is notable about these four core values is that they represent opposite or competing assumptions. The competing or opposite values in each quadrant give rise to the name for the model, the Competing Values Model.
Each quadrant has been given a label to distinguish its most notable characteristics. It's like Fig. 2.
Fig. 2) The Competing Values Model
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This CVM would overcome the problems of traditional police culture studies. First, cultural diversity of police organization could be identified because CVM is concentrating its focus into the organization.
Second, CVM is a framework that was empirically derived, has been found to have both face and empirical validity. So the scarcity of empirical studies in the field of police culture could be overcome.
Third, the competing or opposite values in each quadrant of the CVM would supplement one-sided(negative) explanations of the traditional police culture.
2) Police Productivity
Productivity means many things to many people. But in this study, productivity is understood as a combination of the effectiveness and efficiency concepts. Effectiveness generally refers to achieving certain defined results or outcomes without regard to the cost of achieving them. Efficiency, on the other hand, refers to achieving any given result with the minimum expenditure of effort required to achieve that result.
Productivity asks both whether a desired result was achieved(the effectiveness question) and what resources were consumed to achieve it(the efficiency question). In the public-sectors like police organization, quality also should be considered in measuring productivity though that's extremely difficult.
The measurement of police productivity has slowly evolved. So as to measure police productivity, two factors should be identified - 'what'(the targets) and 'how'(the ways).
On the 'what' factor, traditionally police have stressed crime rate, arrest rates, clearance rate, ratios of police to citizens, etc. Nowadays victimization surveys, police task evaluation, fear of crime and community quality of life, customer satisfaction with services provided are included in productivity measurement. Much of the evolution of police productivity measurements rests in these assessments' shift in focus from the police organization to the environment. In the past, almost all police measures focused on what the police do. Today, much of the assessment of police agencies and personnel focuses on the impact of their actions on their most immediate clients - the citizen.
Police productivity could be measured quantitatively or(and) qualitatively. Function approach, productivity index approach, and relative efficiency approach like DEA, SFM are included on the part of quantitative analysis. Qualitative analysis can be used when quantitative approach is impossible and it depends usually on index system. Another approach that surveys members of an organization could be validated in the field of public-sector.
In this study, such a survey method would be used because police organization have multiple objectives(so it's difficult to measure effectiveness) and many things it produces have no market values(so it's difficult to measure efficiency).
2. Setting a Framework for Analyses.
In this study, police organizational culture was analyzed by the CVM. And units of analysis were twofold - police stations and its sub-units(administration / crime prevention / criminal investigation) in Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency. Total 815 policemen were surveyed for this study and their demographical characteristics were considered at the correlation analysis.
Police productivity was measured by the survey method using questionnaire.
The framework for analysis of this study is like Fig. 3.
Fig. 3) The Framework for analyses.
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Ⅲ. Finding Results.
1. The Traits of Korean Police Organizational Cultures.
The organizational cultures of korean police stations are like Fig. 4. Overall, korean police stations' organizational cultures are dominated by hierarchical culture with the group(2.639) and developmental(3.080) cultures being minimized and the hierarchical(3.606) and rational(3.560) cultures being emphasized.
Fig. 4) The Traits of Korean Police Stations' Organizational Cultures
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Police organizations have more stressed stability and control rather than flexibility and discretion, and such emphases must have brought out these organizational profiles.
Cultural differences among the police stations were also demonstrated. Developmental(p = 0.0023), rational(p = 0.0249), hierarchical(p = 0.0001), group(p = 0.0001) cultures appeared differently among the stations with significance level 0.05.
The organizational cultures of police station's sub-units are like Fig. 5. In the administration unit, hierarchical(3.671), rational(3.600), developmental(3.189), group(2.745) cultures were identified. In the crime prevention unit, rational(3.557) culture was dominated and hierarchical(3.506), developmental(3.126), group(2.599) cultures followed. Hierarchical(3.640), rational(3.531), developmental(2.960), group(2.593) cultures were the profiles of criminal investigation unit.
Fig. 5) The organizational cultures of police station's sub-units
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The cultural differences among the sub-units could be explained by the work environments they face. In the administration and criminal investigation units, rules and processes are highly emphasized. On the other hand, substantial decreases of crimes and disorders are more stressed in the crime prevention unit.
Cultural differences among the sub-units of police station were partly demonstrated. Developmental(p = 0.0002), hierarchical(p = 0.0011), group(p = 0.0150) cultures appeared differently among the sub-units with significance level 0.05, but rational(p = 0.3991) culture didn't.
2. The Influence of Organizational Culture on Police Productivity.
Overall, the influence of the organizational cultures on the police productivity was found as Table. 1.
Table. 1) Organizational Culture and Police Productivity
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All four cultures are influencing police productivity positively, but the magnitudes of each culture are different from one another. To improve police productivity, police leaders should emphasize the rational culture.
In the administration unit, the organizational cultures influencing the productivity are like Table. 2. All four cultures are influencing police productivity positively, but the developmental culture's influence surpasses all other cultures'.
Table. 2) Organizational Culture and Police Productivity(Administration Unit)
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In the crime prevention unit, the organizational cultures influencing the productivity are like Table. 3. All four cultures, except for hierarchical culture, are influencing police productivity positively, and the rational culture's influence surpasses all other cultures'.
Table. 3) Organizational Culture and Police Productivity(Crime Prevention Unit)
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In the criminal investigation unit, the organizational cultures influencing the productivity are like Table. 4. All four cultures are influencing police productivity positively, and the rational culture's influence surpasses all other cultures'.
Table. 4) Organizational Culture and Police Productivity(Criminal Investigation Unit)
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According to this study, police organizations should change their organizational cultures from the hierarchical-dominated cultural profile to rational-dominated. Though it's not easy to change organizational cultures, some suggestions could be drawn. New leadership, open communications, use of OD strategy, reform of personnel management system and so on were discussed in this study.
Ⅳ. Concluding Remarks.
This study corresponds to the theoretical and practical criteria. Most studies about organizational cultures in Korea have been conducted targeting private organizations. This study was for the public organization and would extend the limits of past research scope. And this study suggested some ways to change organizational cultures to improve productivity.
Despite those contributions, this study has still some limitations. First, all data were collected by survey method using questionnaire. As is often the case, the police are not easy subjects of research. Second, geographic limitation(to Seoul) also should be considered.
Therefore, the future study should be more systematic employing advanced statistical methods as well as qualitative approach such as interviews, extending geographical boundaries.