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Beyond police culture: A quantitative study of the organisational culture in 64 local police forces in Belgium

Heidi Paesen (Leuven Institute of Criminology, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium)
Jeroen Maesschalck (Leuven Institute of Criminology, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium)
Kim Loyens (Utrecht University School of Governance, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands)

Policing: An International Journal

ISSN: 1363-951X

Article publication date: 28 May 2019

Issue publication date: 2 October 2019

1287

Abstract

Purpose

Combining insights from the traditional literature on police culture with insights from the broader literature on organisational culture and on grid-group cultural theory (Douglas, 1970), the purpose of this paper is to introduce a new 15-dimensional framework of “organisational culture in the police” and test this framework via a survey instrument. This new conceptualisation is broader than the traditional police culture concept and allows for comparisons of the police with other organisations.

Design/methodology/approach

A newly developed instrument to measure the 15-dimensional framework, called the “Leuven Organisational Culture Questionnaire (LOCQ)”, was tested in 64 local police forces in Belgium (n=3,847).

Findings

The hypothesised 15-dimensional model is largely confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis. Assessments of between-unit variation show that the LOCQ is sufficiently sensitive to identify differences between work units in police organisations. The authors also find that traditional police culture characteristics tend to vary slightly less between units than the other characteristics. Also, there is less variation for characteristics related to police work (e.g. law enforcement orientation and citizen orientation) than for characteristics associated with the unit level (e.g. weak supervisory support and internal solidarity) or the organisational level (e.g. rule orientation and results orientation).

Originality/value

This paper expands the traditional “police culture” concept to a more generic and theory-driven conceptualisation of “organisational culture in the police”. The survey instrument offers a standardised way to map and compare culture within police organisations, and to compare it with the culture of other organisations both within and outside law enforcement.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers as well as the journal editor for their very valuable comments and suggestions. This research was funded by the University of Leuven and, to a more limited extent, by the 64 participating local police forces and the four provinces in which the local police forces were located. The police forces and provinces helped with distributing the surveys, but they had no access to the data and were not involved in the analysis of the data.

Citation

Paesen, H., Maesschalck, J. and Loyens, K. (2019), "Beyond police culture: A quantitative study of the organisational culture in 64 local police forces in Belgium", Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 42 No. 5, pp. 814-831. https://doi.org/10.1108/PIJPSM-12-2018-0171

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited

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