NCJ Number
176755
Journal
Police Chief Volume: 65 Issue: 12 Dated: December 1998 Pages: 68-76
Date Published
1998
Length
9 pages
Annotation
The Police Organizational Leadership Model provides a useful approach for considering the broad strategic actions needed to initiate and sustain the change process involved in the transition to community-oriented policing and problem solving (COPPS).
Abstract
The strategic steps that a police executive must take to initiate and sustain the change cycle include adopting transformational leadership rather than transactional management, moving the organizational structure from the bureaucratic to the organic, and changing the organizational culture from risk-averse to risk-tolerant. Basic actions required to reposition a police agency for COPPS include adopting the decentralized structure of a professional police bureaucracy; eliminating unnecessary or unduly restrictive rules, regulations, policies, and procedures; and reconstructing remaining policies and procedures into a facilitative rather than controlling format to the extent possible. Other actions include increasing staff skills through training and experiential opportunities and developing specific, measurable performance goals and focusing on their attainment. In addition, the effective executive must lead and not simply manage. The leadership process involves four components: vision, communication, positioning, and self-management. Organizational, environmental, and cultural concerns mean that successful strategic change in police agencies is usually a prolonged process. Initiating and sustaining the transition to COPPS involves unfreezing the organization from its old way of doing things, adopting new behaviors, and reinforcing newly learned behaviors. The Police Organizational Leadership Model suggests a strategic approach that executives can use for the simultaneous, incremental introduction of crucial change variables to the organization. This model provides a framework by incorporating the crucial variables correlated with organizational change and integrating them with the behaviors required of the executive. Figure