Critically Assessing the Utility of Police Bureaucracies in the 1980s - Implications of Management Theory Z

• NCJ Number: 92107
• Journal: Journal of Police Science and Administration Volume: 11 Issue: 4 Dated: (December 1983) Pages: 420-429
• Author(s): W G Archambeault; C L Wierman
• Date Published: 1983
• Length: 10 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Police managers should adopt the Management Theory Z imported from Japan to create a work climate that fosters productivity and responds effectively to police employees who are better educated, more sophisticated, and more diverse than their predecessors in terms of culture, race, and sex.

Abstract

Police organizations in the 1980's face the dilemma of satisfying increased demands for services while operating with reduced resources. A possible solution is increased productivity, but traditional police bureaucracy creates a work climate that actually discourages productivity, initiative, and personal commitment. Historical trends in police management have followed those of American business and the military, moving from a bureaucratic structure based on principles of Weber and Fayol to a hybrid model that uses systems concepts but still retains many features of authoritarian bureaucracy. This model's inability to deal with technological, procedural, and legal developments as well as a new breed of police officer has resulted in four major problems: an adversary relationship between management and officer, unionization and conflicting loyalties among police officers, overspecialized career paths and inadequate manager training, and high rates of voluntary officer turnover. Businesses in the 1970's discovered that the bureaucratic management model was a contributing factor to loss of competitiveness, declining productivity, and higher costs, and many are restructuring themselves according to Management Theory Z. This approach, as developed by William Ouchi, has three dimensions: concern for productivity and achieving work tasks, concern for the workers as human beings, and concern for the work organization as a total social and cultural system and its relationship to family and society. To implement Management Z, police managers must develop a teamwork perspective among officers, a consistent process of shared decisionmaking, and a holistic concern for officers' welfare. The paper includes over 70 references.