Dynamics of police organizational change, learning-based interactions, and agency innovation and cooperation within community policing

The research addressed the gap in knowledge between characteristics of police-agency implementations aimed at community-oriented policing and an ambiguous success. The research used the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey results data from approximately 2,800 police departments conducted in 2003 and published in 2006. The statistical analyses included correlate, regression, frequency cross-tabulation, factor analyses, and degree-of-independence testing. The study designated several LEMAS variable composite constructs to signify levels of agency success and types of agencies as modicums of community-oriented policing success. The primary composites that were considered in the degree-of-success research were organizational learning-based change and agency- innovative implementations. The findings suggested that certain composite variable constructs with high degrees of inherent organizational learning and innovation also had the most influence as characteristics of organizational change in community-oriented policing. The study differentiated between organizational advances and organizational progress in which change was assimilated with a higher degree of organizational reflection and critical thinking. The research implications include an apparent need to examine elements of systemic inertia and resistance to organizational change that apparently limit the success of community-oriented policing efforts and implementations and may also interfere with the research validity and intervene in the process of collecting reliable research data.