Conference Agenda

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. Research and practice, however, press on to a shift from a rigid division between frontline and back office towards an integrated, adaptive service delivery between them. This paper argues that optimizing service delivery within/by the police requires such an holistic approach – fostering strong connections between frontline operational units and back office support systems. Our study examined five initiatives in the Dutch police force which sought interplay between frontline and back office. We specifically explored under under which conditions interactions between them enhance or hinder internal and external service delivery. Our cases involve: 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.

By moving beyond the dominant paradigm of solely strengthening the frontline and analysing real-world examples of frontline–back office interplay, this paper demonstrates how a collaborative relationship can significantly enhance service delivery. We identify critical areas where strong collaboration is crucial and highlight 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. Moreover, three specific lessons can be learned. First, further improving the operational management of tomorrow's police requires clear choices from the police leadership, because there is not sufficient back office capacity to process all demands. This requires police professionals to sometimes say ‘no’ to politicians demanding action. Second, the desired change movement should ultimately lead to behavioural change among police employees with regard to learning, both from operations, back office 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. Third, while the police are good at implementing and learning during temporary well-defined pilots, projects and programs, 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. Concluding, our study demonstrates that interplay between front and back office requires learning at the personal, organizational, and institutional level, and identifies strategies to enhance this interplay.

Given the complex and interdependent nature of the societal challenges that governments face, many scholars and practitioners emphasize the need for “integrated policies” to reach goals (Aoki et al. 2023; OECD 2023). However, efforts to implement such policy integration often fall short. Policy siloes and their resulting categorizations can become overly rigid and entrenched, particularly within public sector organizations (Tett 2015, Andersen & Breidahl 2024). Moreover, translating integral policies into integrated service delivery often requires changes in the roles and practices of service providers and frontline professionals, potentially leading to conflict and resistance (Tummers et al. 2015; Klemsdal et al. 2022). The formulation of integrated policy goals is no guarantee that all specified instruments and actors automatically interact to achieve them (Cejudo & Michel 2017: 758).

Despite these concerns, there is still relatively little understanding of “what happens between the establishment of policy and its impact in the world of action” in studies of policy integration (O’Toole, 2000: 273) and, specifically, how integrated service delivery comes about (see also Pemer & Skjolsvik 2018). This paper focuses on the process by which integrated service delivery is achieved, uniquely combining a perspective on the necessary actions and changes at the institutional, organizational, and individual levels. Specifically, this study is informed by the idea that while the right institutional arrangements and organizational settings are important in facilitating integrated service delivery (see Andersson et al. 2011; Klindt et al. 2023), actual integration is crucially dependent on the everyday actions that individual policy advisors and frontline professionals undertake. Through the conceptual lens of boundary-spanning behavior (Nederhand et al. 2019; Van Meerkerk & Edelenbos 2022), this study assesses the specific strategies through which individual civil servants can drive integrated service delivery, even in challenging institutional and organizational contexts.

To develop this argument, this study examines 45 Dutch municipalities implementing integrated policies to combat illiteracy. Within the Netherlands, national and regional governments have advocated an "integrated approach" to illiteracy, for which municipalities are tasked with its implementation. However, municipalities have achieved varying degrees of success in implementing such an integrated policy. Due to their involvement in a training program, the authors were closely involved with civil servants tasked with implementing an integrated approach to illiteracy in their respective municipalities. By tracking data about the context, strategies and ultimate impact in these municipalities between October 2022 and September 2024, the authors compiled a rich dataset (n=45) of municipalities and their progress in achieving integrated service delivery. Based on this data (n=45), the study employs a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (Schneider and Wagemann, 2012) to analyze what conditions are necessary or sufficient for achieving integrated service delivery, and what different pathways to integrated service delivery exist. Supplemented by in-depth qualitative material, the findings demonstrate what specific (boundary-spanning) strategies fit with what kind of institutional and organizational conditions. The study's insights provide actionable recommendations for policymakers and practitioners seeking to improve the implementation of integrated policies

Updating a textbook is an incremental process. Academics stand, as Newton said, ‘on the shoulders of giants’ carrying forward established points of view. What then can they do when the world they are writing about is changing rapidly. The literature of the study of the policy making and implementation has its contemporary roots in work carried out mostly in the United States and western Europe since the 1960s. Its focus is the detailed study of domestic policy processes and has developed a strong attention to the delivery of public policy. This paper is about the updating a textbook on that during a time when throughout the world events are occurring that challenge conventional perspectives. It discusses issues about incorporating elements related to the intractable global problems and conflicts, challenge to the ‘rational model’ and the continuing demise of liberal democracy. Drawing on the experience of three authors engaged in re-evaluating the theories and case studies included in a textbook, this paper explores the key challenges and lessons that emerge in light of the multiple and intersecting crises facing the world today. It examines how these crises influence and should reshape the theories, methods, and assumptions underlying policy formulation and implementation.