Cultural change and lodestones in the British Police

摘要

•Purpose: This Research Paper considers a challenge to an occupational jurisdiction in the British police. Historically, street cops have defended the importance of operational credibility as a way of sustaining the value of experience, and inhibiting attempts to introduce external leaders. This has generated a particular form of policing and leadership that is deemed by the British government as inadequate to face the problems of the next decade. ud•Design: The project used the High Potential Development Scheme (HPDS) of the British police to assess the value of operational credibility and the possibilities of radical cultural change. Data is drawn from participants on the programme, from those who failed to get onto the programme, and from officers who have risen through the ranks without access to a fast track scheme.ud•Findings: Most organizational change fails in its own terms, often because of cultural resistance. However, if we change our metaphors of culture from natural to human constructions it may be possible to focus on the key point of the culture: the lodestone that glues it together. Operational credibility maybe such a cultural lodestone and undermining it offers the opportunity for rapid and radical change. ud•Originality: Most assessments of cultural change focus on those charged with enacting the change and explain failure through recourse to natural metaphors of change. This papers challenges the convention that cultural change can only ever be achieved, if at all, through years of effort.ud