Institutional hybridity and cultural isomorphism in contemporary policing
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| Author | Tom Cockcroft |
| DOI | 10.1177/1461355719889462 |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Special issue: Change and Continuity in the Police |
Special issue: Change and Continuity in the Police
Institutional hybridity and cultural
isomorphism in contemporary policing
Tom Cockcroft
Leeds Beckett University, UK
Abstract
Recent work on policing has increasingly acknowledged the influence of a broad array of changes upon both the structure
and culture of police organizations. Generally, however, literature and research have tended to focus attention onto those
elements of the broader police environment that effect such developments, whereas little commentary, to date, has been
directed towards those features which impact across the broader public sector. Through drawing on the concepts of
‘hybrid professionalism’ [Noordegraaf M (2015) Hybrid professionalism and beyond: (new) forms of public
professionalism in changing organizational and societal contexts. Journal of Professions and Organization 2: 187–206] and
‘institutional isomorphism’ [DiMaggio PJ and Powell WW (1983) The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and
collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review 48: 147–160], this conceptual paper will argue that
the impact of neoliberal ideology on the contemporary public sector has created a police organization for which
professionalism i ncreasingly denote s generic managemen t skills that are com mon across differen t occupations and
different police roles. In particular, it will be suggested that such institutional isomorphism may drive ideational
responses commensurate with cultural change within police organizations. In short, therefore, the paper will make the
case that, in parallel with changes alr eady identified by other academic s, broader structural changes may lead t o a
narrower and more generic set of cultural responses within contemporary police organizations.
Keywords
Police culture, cultural change
Introduction
One of the key features of recent academic work in the area
of police culture has been that of social change and its
associated cultural impact (Cockcroft, 2017). These forms
of change, the social and the cultural, are notoriously dif-
ficult to substantiate or measure, but remain central to our
understanding of the relationship between police culture
and its wider social context. The work of writers such as
Chan (1997), for example, has been instrumental in articu-
lating our understanding of the ways in which a variety of
external factors (although specific to policing) help to
determine the cultural world of the police officer. Likewise,
the work of Terpstra et al. (2019) identifies the growing
abstraction of policing (between both police organizations
and communities and police officers and their colleagues)
as a result of developments in the discourses of policing,
changes to organizational structures and the wider police
reform agenda. This conceptual paper seeks to identify and
develop the impact of broader external factors, comple-
mentary to the work of both Chan (1997) and Terpstra
et al. (2019), which have created fundamental changes to
the ways in which public sector practitioners experience the
idea of ‘professionalism’. Furthermore, it will tentatively
suggest that these shifts may indicate a resulting cultural
change among police officers.
Late modernity, postmodernity and
policing
In his paper, Policing a Postmodern Society, Reiner (1992)
provided, arguably, the first academic attempt to explore
Corresponding author:
Tom Cockcroft, Leeds Beckett University, City Campus, Leeds School of
Social Sciences, Leeds LS1 3HE, UK.
Email: t.w.cockcroft@leedsbeckett.ac.uk
International Journalof
Police Science & Management
2019, Vol. 21(4) 218–229
ªThe Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1461355719889462
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