Police forces globally grapple with immense and ever-evolving challenges, including the rise of cybercrime and organized crime. These threats come amidst constrained resources, with personnel and funding often stretched thin. Traditionally, efforts have focused on strengthening the police frontline. However, this paper argues that optimizing police performance hinges on a more holistic approach - fostering a strong connection between frontline operational units and back-office support systems.

This study specifically explores under what conditions the frontline operations and back office departments of a police force can learn together in order to help the police force as a whole face a volatile world. The study draws on an extensive examination of the National Police in the Netherlands, specifically examining how the frontline and back office work together on 1) Equipping new Personal Protection Units, 2) Introducing Tasers into the police force, 3) Enhancing the onboarding program for new personnel, 4) Automating standard police tasks using robotic process automation , and 5) Building an internal website for knowledge sharing. The data draws on more than 80 documents, 28 interviews, and six on-site observations.

This paper moves beyond the dominant paradigm of solely strengthening the frontline. By analyzing real-world examples, it demonstrates how a collaborative frontline-backoffice relationship can significantly enhance police performance. The research identifies critical areas where strong frontline-backoffice collaboration is crucial. It highlights potential pitfalls when these connections are weak, such as delays, confusion, and ultimately, operational inefficiencies. The study underscores the importance of effective communication, shared goals, and a culture of equality and collaboration between frontline and backoffice units.

Three key lessons are drawn, some of which clash with the specific nature of the police organization and the core beliefs of police professionals:

Choosing in strategic objectives. Further improving the operational management of tomorrow's police requires clear choices from the police leadership, because there is not sufficient backoffice capacity to process all demands. There must be insight into how many changes the organization can handle in the coming years and which changes have priority. This requires the police professionals to sometimes say ‘no’ to politicians demanding action.

Facilitating learning behaviour. The desired change movement should ultimately lead to behavioural change among police employees with regard to learning, both from operations, backoffice and senior management teams. Learning behaviour can be facilitated by structures that stimulate and safeguard learning and that give people peace and space and reward them for good initiatives.

Institutionalizing practices. The police are good at implementing and learning during temporary well-defined pilots, projects and programs, but continuous improvement of business operations requires that temporary initiatives are embedded in the culture, structure and processes of the organization and thus that learning practices are institutionalized. This clashes with a police culture mainly driven by quick response to incidents and threats, requiring it to develop more stability and patience in order to best face a volatile world.

Organizations that cultivate learning are learning organizations (Watkins & Marsick, 1993), which, for police forces, is an important aspect in a volatile and constantly changing environment. A limited number of studies have demonstrated that police forces can be considered a learning organization, or that they possess essential elements of such a learning culture (Wathne, 2012; Filstad & Gottschalk, 2011). Alt-hough job satisfaction can be a result of a learning organization (Egan et al. 2004), there is very little empirical research on the relationship between the learning organization and job satisfaction in the public sector in general and policing in particular. Another under-researched aspect is the role of errors. In learning contexts, errors are inevitable and can even be beneficial. However, even small mistakes can have serious consequences in police work and will be avoided at all costs by officers. The propensity of organizational members to take risks and to disclose and discuss failures openly is measured via psycho-logical safety (Edmondson, 1999), which is also positively related to job satisfaction (e.g., Frazier et al., 2017; Mitterer et al., 2017). In a learning organization, psychological safety is considered at various lev-els (e.g., Marsick & Watkins, 2003) and could act as a mediator.

Our quantitative study investigates the link between learning organization and job satisfaction and the mediating role of psychological safety in a policing context. We use the dimensions of learning organiza-tion questionnaire (DLOQ) developed by Watkins and Marsick (1997), Edmonson’s (1999) instrument for measuring psychological safety, and the short index of job satisfaction (Judge et al., 2000). An online questionnaire was used to obtain the data from 103 German police officers who were selected for future leadership positions via an online questionnaire. We investigate the connection between learning culture and job satisfaction, as well as the potential mediation by psychological safety, using regression anal-yses. Our preliminary findings indicate a that the learning culture has a positive impact on the error cul-ture within the German police, although psychological safety completely mediates this connection.

The current police service faces diverse challenges (Hartley et al., 2023; Morrell/Bradford 2018). These include frequent legislative changes, structural reforms, management reforms (e.g. documentation requirements for outputs), crises (e.g. refugee crisis, coronavirus pandemic or the Ukraine war), digital transformation, increasing public pressure (e.g. from the media) and a general declining trust in state administration. This means that police organisations commonly operate under conditions of institutional pluralism (Kraatz/Block 2008, Thornton et al. 2012), i.e. that they must attend to varied, and potentially conflicting, demands from constituencies. Accordingly, police organisations partake in several discourses and are themselves members of many social categories (Jancsary et al. 2017). Police organisations are at the same time e.g. required to preserve the public order, act as moral authority, conduct social work, to advice citizens.

The paper analyses the reactions of organisations to these multiple and hybrid demands. To do so, the study draws on the micro-foundations (Powell/Colyvas 2008, Thornton et al. 2012), more specific the role identities of policemen and policewomen (Kodeih/Greenwood 2014, Kraatz/Block 2008). The starting point for the analysis is the tenet that a “substantial transformation of the public sector also requires a new work role or social identity for public sector employees” (Meyer/Hammerschmid 2006a:100). In general, role identities are internalised expectations of membership in a social category or position (Jancsary et al. 2017; Stryker/Burke 2000), e.g. police officers as crime fighters, as bureaucrats, or as managers. Role identities, however, are not stable constructs (Meyer/Hammerschmid 2006a, 2006b) and their “transformation is fueled by gaps at the level of identities that induce actors to redefine their roles if they can no longer achieve (e.g. due to negative feedback from important reference groups) a positive self-concept by drawing on the role-identity provided” (Meyer/Hammerschmid 2006a:107) and “negative feedback from important reference groups leads to identity distress” (Meyer/Hammerschmid 2006b:1004). Research has found that, in reaction, “actors respond not only by developing hybrid forms and practices but also by a hybridization on the level of identities” (Meyer/Hammerschmid 2006b:1007). Hybrid role identities are thus not the exception, but the rule (Meyer/Hammerschmid 2006a, 2006b; Rao et al. 2003).

There are two gaps in the literature regarding a) specifically considering the role identities of police officers as street-level bureaucrats (and not the leadership/management level) and b) the change of role identity(ies) over time. Addressing these gaps, the research question is as follows: What are the reported role identities of police officers as “street-level bureaucrats”, and what changes can be observed with increasing years of service?

The paper conducts an analysis of the Austrian police officers. Data is stemming from a survey from 250 police officers that is representative in terms of gender, age of service and size of municipality. The paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the role identities and of street-level bureaucrats and their hybridisation, as well as the changes of role identities over time.

Police accountability is a key element of all liberal democratic states (Rowe, 2020). Policing the police is so important given the authority which police carry, which includes coercive powers over citizens and residents. There is a large literature about the governance of policing, including the extent to which, in different states, operational independence is a goal to strive for. However, a systematic literature review by Roberts and Hartley (2023) found that, for Westminster systems of government (where public servants including police are expected to be impartial in relation to the government of the day), there was considerable research and critical interest in formal mechanisms of governance, but very little literature about roles and relationships which characterize the dynamics occurring between senior police leaders and the elected politicians they work with. There is even less literature about the capabilities (skills, abilities, judgement) that are eeded by senior leaders to manage that political interface.

This paper combines the theoretical frameworks of the administrative-politics dichotomy (Svara, 1998; Aberbach and Rockman, 2001) and leadership with political astuteness to examine how UK police officers acquire sufficient political astuteness to navigate the complex terrain of working with politicians in a professional and ethical way. The administrative-politics dichotomy suggests that there should be separation of political work from administrative work in public organizations. It has strong normative force (Hughes, 2017) but has also been called a “a useful fiction” (Peters, 2001, p. 82). Alford et al (2017) found, among senior public servants in three countries, that public servants sometimes perceived a clear demarcation or line between their work and that of politicians but that in various contexts it was a zone, with each party contributing to achieve joint goals in a degree of shared space. Research suggests that senior public servants can find having political savvy or political astuteness a valuable capability (Hartley and Manzie, 2020) including whether to stay on one side of the line or cross into the zone.

This paper explores political astuteness for senior and aspiring senior police leaders, in their work with elected politicians. The paper draws on an empirical study, using interviews and workshops, of 11 chief constables and 11 superintendents in the UK to understand how police acquire or enhance their capabilities of political astuteness to navigate the challenges of working with elected politicians. The chief constables reflect on how they themselves acquired political astuteness and whether and how they enable others in their force to acquire such capabilities. The superintendents, as aspiring senior leaders, reflect on their own journeys to understand politics, party politics and operational independence. Together, these reflections show a journey of increasing need for and use of political astuteness capabilities. The implications for the politics-administration dichotomy are explored, along with the implications for training, education and development for senior and aspiring senior police leaders.