Student Case Studies

If members of an organization have differing values and role expectations, it is not surprising when like-minded members gravitate to each other and form groups. If all the members who really liked baseball formed a group, no one would care. But when groups have very different beliefs about how their jobs should be performed, that can have serious effects on any organization. In the case of a police department, it is not uncommon for members to have different beliefs about crime and the police role, since these are important matters about which there is not clearly just one "right way" to think.

The coexistence of both groups suggests that the members feel strongly, otherwise they probably would have had a meeting of the minds by now or found some other way to make everyone a member of one overall group. It also suggests that the organization's leadership has not been strong enough to rein in all its members—part of its job is to get everyone pulling in the same direction, working to achieve the same mission and goals. This obviously has not happened.

The case study makes it clear that the chief's management and leadership don't deserve the credit. It's possible that leadership has been provided by others in the organization—commanders, supervisors, and/or patrol officers. Another possibility is that the organization has done a good job in hiring people with strong positive values, and these people have collectively held together. One more possibility is that there are forces in the Rixton community—elected leaders, faith leaders, or others—who have been able to exert positive influence.

That would be tough. One of the first things you would want to figure out is whether the sergeant on that shift supported their behavior—if not, he or she should be able to help you. It also matters whether you are a brand new officer (new recruit) or an experienced officer. If you are experienced, you should be able to withstand the influence of these three officers, but if you are brand new, it might be difficult. In that case, you should look for an experienced officer on that shift, or somewhere else in the department, who could help guide you and help "watch your back."

This would probably be a challenge, but it is certainly where corrective action needs to start. Hopefully, you are an experienced sergeant, as this would be a tough assignment for a newbie. The basic approach should be to focus on their behavior and be relentless in requiring that it meet expectations. The message to these three officers should be that they are free to think and believe whatever they want, but their behavior and performance have to comply with guidelines and meet standards. The chief's failure to establish many guidelines and standards will make the job difficult, so as a sergeant you will also need to "manage up," that is, find ways to get your bosses to do their jobs better. Don't expect any quick miracles.

The organization needs a more systematic body of guidelines and standards so that sergeants and other managers in the organization can do their jobs. The chief should also take every opportunity to reward those officers who are doing their jobs correctly, while also dealing directly with those few who aren't. Definitely make sure that these officers don't become supervisors or field training officers—you would want to limit their opportunities to influence others, especially any new recruits.

Police mission, values, and vision statements often don't differ very much, but as in Spokane, a department may try to find a "hook," that is, something that ties the statements specifically to the agency. Spokane went with "Service, Pride, and Dedication" to match their acronym, SPD. Beyond that, the values statement tried to say what they stood for and believed in, whereas the vision statement spoke to what the agency aspired to in the future. None of these is necessarily any more important than the others. What is important is that these statements have shared meaning to organization members. If they are just some words on paper or on the wall, they don't contribute very much to the organization's effectiveness.

Chief Mangan's reasoning in Spokane was a bit different than Chief Couper's in Madison. Chief Mangan came in from the outside and he noticed that facilities and equipment were sub-standard. He felt he needed to address those internal problems first and certainly hoped that doing so would earn him some internal support for other changes later. Chief Couper also came from the outside, but his initial observation was that management within the department was authoritarian (think Theory X). He felt he needed to change the way Madison PD employees were treated within the organization before he could then ask them to change the way they treated the public. As both cases illustrate, fixing internal problems (within the organization) might sometimes be a prerequisite to changing external behavior (the way employees do their work in the community and interact with the public).

Chief Mangan seemed to exemplify participative styles of management and leadership consistent with Theory Y and management by objectives. He seemed to be confident in delegating authority and giving employees opportunities to meet upper-level needs at work. His style seemed to be a good fit for the organization. While some mid-level managers may have found his style somewhat threatening, the case study indicates that many members of the organization appreciated the open lines of communication and the opportunities to participate in decision making.

The case study mainly identifies strengths. He seems to have worked hard to develop external support in the community while at the same time using a participative style that gave new opportunities to lots of members of the organization. The only weakness revealed in the case is that some mid-level managers felt bypassed or out of the loop. We can't tell from the case whether this was necessary—i.e., because they opposed change—or whether they just couldn't adapt to a faster-paced and more free-wheeling method of operation. It is possible that Chief Mangan didn't do enough to make sure that everyone was on board, but it's also true that significant organizational changes inevitably have their opponents and detractors.

The case mainly mentions the minority community and also the business community. The case indicates that the police department had poor relationships with both of these segments of the community when Chief Davis took command, so paying more attention to them is not surprising. It should be noted that Chief Davis was promoted from within the department, so he probably already had a good grasp of what needed to be done internally.

It does seem like Chief Davis employed an "outside-in" approach, especially in the example of the meeting with the business community at the Sheraton. Sometimes an inside chief (one promoted from within), even though he or she has the advantage of detailed knowledge of the organization, has some challenges in making changes just on account of having been part of the existing system for many years. It seems that Chief Davis had some ideas about changes that should be made, but needed some outside pressure to help convince the rest of the organization that change was really necessary.

This is a great example. When a police department partners with the community and pledges to be more responsive to the community, that doesn't mean that it abdicates its professional responsibility to push for what it believes is in the best interests of all the people. Chief Davis worked hard on behalf of locating the new police station in the Cambodian community because he believed it would do the most good there. As he stated, he ultimately would have accepted the other location if forced to do so, but until then he did his best to convince his constituency of what he believed was the better option.

The case study does not give us much information about his leadership or management style within the organization. He certainly seemed to exemplify the "statesman" style of executive leadership discussed in Chapter 7, and we would also say that he exhibited transformational leadership in the examples provided in the case.

The case study indicates that the Lowell Police Department had some serious community-relations problems when Chief Davis took over and that he addressed them very effectively. In doing so, he seems to have reached out to the community and demonstrated more openness than past administrations, while still keeping a strategic sense of what he was trying to accomplish. The case study does not indicate any weaknesses, nor does it provide very much information about what Chief Davis focused on within the organization, how he went about it, or how successful that was.

It seems that a lot of change was needed and the new chief was clearly intended to be a "change agent." Often, the person who takes the lead on a change effort of this magnitude is destined for a short tenure, because the changes upset so many people in the organization. You might compare Chief Fortier's experience with those of Chief Mangan in Spokane and Chief Davis in Lowell. Did they do it better, or was the situation in Riverside simply more difficult? Chief Mangan, an outside chief like Chief Fortier, devoted his first year or two to building support, both in the community and in the police department, and he clearly engaged a lot of members of the police department in planning the changes to be made. Perhaps a similar effort would have paid off for Chief Fortier. However, he was brought into a situation in which city hall seemed to expect quicker changes, so perhaps he didn't have much choice.

Chief Fortier changed the roles of lieutenants rather dramatically, from watch commanders to area commanders. This may not sound like much, but they went from being responsible for a group of officers during the hours of a patrol shift, to being responsible for a section of the city 24/7. The case study indicates that the lieutenants struggled with this change in roles, but even more, the sergeants who inherited the lieutenants' former watch commander duties struggled. The case suggests that they were not well informed about the changes or their rationale and were not given much training or support for their new duties. It can be assumed that the sergeants felt they already had full-time jobs, and then were suddenly saddled with additional work without much explanation or preparation. The Chief indicated that, in retrospect, he should have had the sergeants more involved in the change process. Given the critical role that first-line supervisors play in organizations, especially police departments, this probably would have been a good idea.

This was a difficult situation from the start. It seems that Chief Fortier had a mandate to implement changes quickly, and many of these changes were resisted by members of the organization. Moreover, previous administrations had taken a free-rein or laissez-faire approach to running the organization, so Chief Fortier's approach represented an abrupt change in management style and philosophy. Organization members who felt threatened naturally turned to their bargaining unit (the RPOA) for protection—that is one of the functions that unions and other labor groups typically fulfill. Chief Fortier clearly tried to get the RPOA on his side, as described in the case, but it seems like the changes he was attempting never got the support of most members of the organization. Other than going more slowly and working harder to build a base of support for the changes, there might not have been much else that he could have done.

The case makes it clear that Chief Fortier made some efforts to engage members of the department in the change process, but they were not always successful or seen as sincere. In contrast to the "high trust, low control" management system that preceded him in Riverside, his approach seems to have included elements of the autocratic and diplomatic leadership styles, and probably comes closest to the "Administrator" executive style discussed in Chapter 7. There was no indication that he tried to generate additional outside pressure for change, such as Chief Davis did in Lowell, although it may not have been needed since he was brought in based on city hall's belief that change was needed. All in all, his approach was not very successful.

Riverside Police Department was clearly in need of some basic system building and administrative system improvements. The challenge was that the organization was full of members who did not see the need for change and who had gotten very comfortable working in the existing systems. In addition, the police department was still providing fairly good service to the public and performing some of its core functions fairly well. It was not a situation of scandal or complete dysfunction. Given this situation, Chief Fortier might have been more successful if he could have addressed one problem at a time, choosing "easy wins" for initial efforts, and engaging more members of the organization in analyzing the situation and coming up with better ways to do things. As it was, it seemed like he tried to change too much too fast, and it seemed like the changes were forced from the top. This often causes resentment and resistance, even when the changes are needed.

The case illustrates how data (including massive amounts of data) might be used to solve individual cases and also to analyze crime-related problems and patterns. Another theme in the case is that the best analysis may not always follow the traditional scientific method. Nigel's approach was more like "looking around in the data" than constructing a model or testing a hypothesis, although he certainly used some technical tools to do it and was guided by some sophisticated concepts.

The case emphasizes the importance of breaking crime down into coherent parts—this is the approach taken in problem-oriented policing. The case also provides some examples of community policing, intelligence-led policing, hot spots policing, and Compstat. The Heron City Police Department seemed to be actively engaged in trying to implement all these strategies. This is not uncommon in today's world of policing, but it is wise to remain a bit skeptical about how much real commitment there is to any strategy. Sometimes police departments want to make sure that they appear to be adopting the latest and greatest idea, but the reality does not always match appearances.

The case provides some good examples of managers within the Heron City Police Department doing their jobs in a very capable manner, but not always seeing the big picture. This coincides with the concept of suboptimization discussed in the text—the managers were running their units effectively but weren't necessarily locked in on the overall organization's goals and needs. The chief's interviews with the various managers show how frustrating and difficult it can be for a leader to get followers (in this case, top-level managers and experts) to think differently about the organization's mission and how best to achieve it.

She certainly needs to find out why her people are following her, of course. She might be able to confront them directly and defuse the situation, or it might reflect a deeper problem that will require some help to address. Beyond that, she probably needs to find a capable manager for the new analysis unit, someone who will appreciate Nigel and not get in his way. Then she might want to spend a few months trying to develop the other senior managers. Some of them might be able to rise above their current narrow perspectives; others might not. Longer-term, she will want to work toward aligning the agency's resources and efforts to the problem-oriented strategy that she clearly favors (and that has been shown to be effective, not just in Heron City but elsewhere).