Scottish Police Service Reform

A Cultural Evaluation

Supt Andrew Tatnell (SIPR Practitioner Fellow)

Mr Garry Elliott (SIPR Associate Fellow)

Background

• OGC Gateway Review April 2012

• Schein’s Rapid Cultural Assessment

• Three levels of Organisational Culture

1. Artefacts

2. Espoused Values

3. Underlying Assumptions

• Assessed by Focus Groups & Questionnaire

Focus Groups

• RPU in Fife, CSP, L&B and Strathclyde

• MIT/Serious Crime Teams Tayside, Grampian, Northern and SCDEA North Team

• Recorded (issue for some participants)

The Competing Values FrameworkFlexibility and Discretion

Stability and Control

Internal focus and Integration

External Focus and Differentiation

The Dominant Culture TypesFlexibility and Discretion

Stability and Control

Internal focus and Integration

External Focus and Differentiation

ADHOCRACYDealing with the problem – being creative – rank and

roles less important

MARKETA focus on performance – being better than others

HIERARCHYValuing roles and rules –

civil service culture

CLANShare vision and goals – participation, cohesion, individuality. A sense of

‘We-ness’

Organisational culture profile

Flexibility and Discretion

Stability and Control

Internal focus and Integration

External Focus and Differentiation

Cameron and Quinn 2006

Clan

Hierarchy Market

Adhocracy

Scottish Police forces

Cameron and Quinn 2006

Two Forces Current Profile

Flexibility and Discretion

Stability and Control

Internal focus and Integration

External Focus and Differentiation

Cameron and Quinn 2006

Clan

Hierarchy Market

Adhocracy

Force B

Force A

Ideal or Preferred Profiles

Flexibility and Discretion

Stability and Control

Internal focus and Integration

External Focus and Differentiation

Clan

Hierarchy Market

Adhocracy

Force B

Force A

Ideal v Current – Rank or Grade variations

Flexibility and Discretion

Stability and Control

Internal focus and Integration

External Focus and Differentiation

Clan

Hierarchy Market

Adhocracy

Executive(Current)

Non-executive(Current)

Ideal (average)

OCAI – the instrument

Looks at six aspects of the organisation:– Dominant characteristics– Organisational leadership– Management of employees– Organisational glue– Strategic emphases– Criteria of success

Organisational characteristics – Force AClan Adhocracy

MarketHierarchy

Clan Adhocracy

MarketHierarchy

Clan Adhocracy

MarketHierarchy

Clan Adhocracy

MarketHierarchy

Clan Adhocracy

MarketHierarchy

Clan Adhocracy

MarketHierarchy

Dominant Characteristics Organisational Leadership Management of Employees

Organisational Glue Strategic Emphases Criteria for success

Clan Adhocracy

MarketHierarchy

Clan Adhocracy

MarketHierarchy

Clan Adhocracy

MarketHierarchy

Clan Adhocracy

MarketHierarchy

Clan Adhocracy

MarketHierarchy

Clan Adhocracy

MarketHierarchy

Dominant Characteristics Organisational Leadership Management of Employees

Organisational Glue Strategic Emphases Criteria for success

Organisational characteristics – Force B

Mind the Gap – seeing the differences

• ‘Ideal’ profile similar across all forces and agencies• Significant differences between ‘ideal’ and current profiles –

stronger Clan and Adhocracy and weaker Market and Hierarchy in the ‘ideal’ profile

• Significant difference between one force and remainder• Desire for more discretion and autonomy within an

organisation with strong shared values• Gap between perception of Executive level managers and

others

• Tension between officers sense of mission and target driven performance culture

• Disaffection with managers perceived to have no previous experience in the specialism

• Strong Clan and professionalism being undermined by focusing on low skill targets and non-specialist tasks

Focus Groups – with specialist units

Extracts from focus groups

“what we are focusing on now ... is very basic stuff, which you don’t need the skills which we’ve been trained in to do. “

“It’s massively frustrating from my perspective, all that mass of expertise absolutely wasted; you’re not allowed to do what you’re good at doing.”

“we don’t engage with community; well we do, we enforce things, but we dinnae engage with them”

“We don’t do warnings anymore.’ It’s a case of ‘if you stop them, you book them’.”

Conclusions

• An important degree of cultural diversity across 10 forces and agencies

• Sense of Clan important to staff – they want greater sense of it

• Tension between officers sense of mission and target driven performance culture

• Staff want organisation which has greater degree of adhocracy and that leaders encourage operational staff to use their discretion, flexibility & creativity in finding local solutions to local problems