Organizational Change in an Urban Police Department

<p>This in-depth case study of a mid-sized police department captures the dynamics struggles and successes of police change revealing the positive organizational and community outcomes that resulted from a persistent drive to reinvent public safety and community relationships. The police profession in the United States faces a legitimacy problem. It is critical that police are prepared to change constantly be adaptive and adopt openness to self-reflection and external comparison moving beyond their comfort zone to overcome the inevitable cultural structural and political obstacles. Using previously unpublished longitudinal data examining a 25-year period Bond-Fortier offers a rich account of the complexity of police management and change within one particular mid-sized city: Lowell Massachusetts.</p><p>The multidisciplinary lens applied provides crucial insights into how and why police organizations respond to a changing environment set certain goals and make decisions about how to achieve those goals. The book analyzes the community and organizational forces that stimulated change in the Lowell Police Department describes the changes that enabled the department to achieve national model status and builds a nexus between influencing forces interdisciplinary theory and the creation of an adaptive 21st-century police organization. </p><p>Organizational Change in an Urban Police Department: Innovating to Reform is essential reading for academics and students in criminal justice criminology organizational studies public administration sociology political science and public policy programs as well as government executives crime policy analysts and public- and private-sector managers and leaders engaged in professional development and leadership courses.</p>