NCJ Number
227129
Journal
Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency Volume: 46 Issue: 2 Dated: May 2009 Pages: 213-244
Date Published
May 2009
Length
32 pages
Annotation
This study explored a life-course perspective of police organizations.
Abstract
A life-course perspective of organizations is a viewpoint claiming that organizations are better understood when research accounts for time, history, and process. Six events along the organizational life course were reviewed in this study: creation, early founding effects, growth periods, declining periods, crisis, and organizational disbanding; two advantages of this perspective were discussed in detail. A life-course perspective promises to invigorate police organizational research with a much needed temporal dimension highlighting the importance of time, history, process, change, and continuity in policing. This perspective may use a range of research designs, including experiments, panel, and longitudinal designs, cross-sectional data, stimulations, and simulations. It opens researchers to study past events through historical and retrospective methods, events unfolding presently through contemporary data collection, and possible futures through hypothetical and experimental designs. The life-course perspective does not add to the murky pool of competing organizational theories. Instead, it enriches these theories with a temporal dimension. Finally, this life-course perspective highlights the importance of creation and disbanding, growth, crises, and decline of organizations. It also refocuses attention on cause and effect, process, change, and continuity. Table, figures, notes, and references